false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173596448m/307468.jpg 307468 2 <B>A manifesto for a text-free literary scholarship.</B> <P>Professor Franco Moretti argues heretically that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. He insists that such a move could bring new luster to a tired field, one that in some respects is among "the most backwards disciplines in the academy." Literary study, he argues, has been random and unsystematic. For any given period scholars focus on a select group of a mere few hundred texts: the canon. As a result, they have allowed a narrow distorting slice of history to pass for the total picture. Moretti offers bar charts, maps, and time lines instead, developing the idea of "distant reading," set forth in his path-breaking essay "Conjectures on World Literature," into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, where the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres&#151;the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel&#151;as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined. 298438 2005 Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History total:47|5:11|4:17|3:14|2:4|1:1| 47 174 92 8 3 1 false false Mon Oct 15 19:18:55 -0700 2007 Mon Oct 15 19:19:21 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jun 18 14:39:55 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 18 14:40:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Jun 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 02 19:06:22 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 20:08:13 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 13 09:44:09 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 13 09:49:55 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Aug 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 12 18:48:20 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 11 06:37:33 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Aug 28 03:14:39 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 28 03:15:51 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Mar 10 23:00:52 -0800 2007 Sat Mar 10 23:01:42 -0800 2007 3 0 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 08 13:37:54 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 08 13:39:14 -0700 2007 0 0 false false Fri Nov 20 11:44:43 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 20 11:44:43 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Wed Nov 04 07:21:43 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 20 12:05:46 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Wed Sep 23 12:53:22 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 23 12:53:22 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Fri Sep 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 04 15:35:49 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 04 15:36:03 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Mon Aug 17 00:34:35 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 00:34:35 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Aug 12 13:52:58 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 12 13:52:58 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Jul 23 06:29:09 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 23 06:29:09 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Jul 14 08:34:23 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 08:34:23 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Jul 13 19:43:10 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 13 19:43:30 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Jul 06 21:31:33 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 06 21:31:33 -0700 2009 1 0 false false Thu Jul 02 07:05:49 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 02 07:05:49 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Jun 22 19:04:45 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 19:04:45 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=307468