Toward a Computational Analysis of Victorian Poetics

Abstract

i have been interested for some time in the kinds of evidence literary scholars use to support arguments for the representative or unique qualities of historical texts. as humanists, we tend to make broad arguments based on a limited number of specific examples. the large-scale digitization of nineteenth-century books and periodicals now makes possible a more comprehensive exploration of the cultural history of victorian texts and their interrelated bibliographic, visual, and linguistic codes. With this new quantity of textual evidence come new kinds of evidence as well, since the digital environment offers us not only new access but also new modes of analysis. Evidence at New Scaleover the last several years, the digitization of nineteenthcentury printed materials has dramatically increased our access to the range and diversity of victorian print culture. the ease with which one can now search for and within digitized texts can obscure the scale of the work behind that search interface. the scope of the Google Books library Project (now at over twenty million books) and other library digitization efforts echoes the scale of nineteenth-century publishing, which vastly exceeded that of all previous periods.as individual readers, we have few opportunities to truly engage with that kind of scale. as specialized, professional readers, we have each read hundreds, perhaps thousands of books-but we contend with AbstrAct: the large-scale digitization of nineteenth-century books and periodicals now makes possible a more comprehensive exploration of the cultural history of victorian texts and their interrelated bibliographic, visual, and linguistic codes. this essay argues that computational analysis can help us move beyond human limitations of vision, memory, and attention in examining this new archive. digital reading can help us to discover texts we do not already know and to resituate those we think we already know, thus producing new research questions and new kinds of evidence.

Victorian roots and branches: “The statistical century” as foundation to the digital humanities

“…Literary studies are not focused only on outliers, however, which brings us to another problem with using close reading as the only method of literary analysis. Often, the claims we as literary scholars make are about larger systems and patterns (of racism, for example), yet as Houston points out, these “broad arguments [tend to be] based on a limited number of specific examples” (, p. 498). Similarly, Lee () calls into question the widespread deployment among literary scholars of the “anecdotal logic” of New Historicism, by which “any single cultural artifact can be a basis for interpretation,” with no need for demonstrating sources of influence or authorial intention (p. 88).…”

“…Victorian Studies and the Digital Humanities (DH) are a natural fit in many ways: Victorian texts are in the public domain and thus available for full digitization and subjection to all kinds of searches, data mining, and analysis. For Victorianists, this is a boon, particularly in light of the fact, as Natalie Houston reminds us, “the scale of nineteenth‐century publishing … vastly exceeded that of all previous periods” (, p. 498), and today, we are rapidly approaching the time when “virtually all books published in the Victorian age” will be available (Cohen, ). On the other hand, copyright laws constrain DH scholarship on more recent texts.…”

Hálózatok a 16–17. századi album amicorumokban

“…Míg Moretti az úgynevezett távoli olvasás (distant reading) megközelítésmódjával a szövegen belüli figurákat és cselekményeket elemzi (legismertebb a Hamlet-elemzése), addig a Jagoda által irodalomszociológiainak mondott vizsgálatugyanazokkal a digitális bölcsészeti eszközökkel -az irodalom intézményrendszerének és társadalmi beágyazottságának aktoraira és eseményeire koncentrál. Példaként említhető Natalie M. Houston projektje, 37 amely a viktoriánus költészet 1840-1900 között működő kapcsolathálóját térképezi fel ; illetve Amy Hungerford 2016-ben megjelent könyve, mely az olvasók hálózatát értelmezi a könyvkiadás, a szerzők és a könyvterjesztők kontextusában. 38 Jagoda végkövetkeztetésével egyetértve az ilyen típusú vizsgálatokban a hálózatban való modellezés nemcsak vizuális segédeszköznek számíthat, hanem felfedhetővé teheti az irodalom közlekedését, recepcióját, működését a társadalom különböző rendszereiben.…”

Beyond the ‘Great Index’: Digital Resources and Actual Copies

“…Taking layout information from the OCR process, rather than the character strings, the project directs attention to the poetics of the page, allowing researchers to systematically examine presentational trends both within and between publications at scales that would be impossible in print. 31 What unites these disparate projects is the recognition that digital objects have properties of their own. Although there are difficulties in obtaining raw data, especially for British publications, most of which have been digitized as part of commercial resources, such projects make clear that digital research can do more for print than simply broaden access.…”