Data, Maps, Networks – Digital Approaches to Reading (in) Nineteenth-Century Literature

Moby Dick ◽

Processing Information ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Recently, there has been a growing number of scholarly attempts to ‘read’ the 19th century either through digital methods or, more specifically as a precursor to contemporary digital culture. The practice of reading is a category through which the two dimensions of spending time in and with the nineteenth century can be thought together. A focus on reading, as a way to spend time in/with the nineteenth century makes us aware of both the knowledge systems and methodologies of accessing and processing information, both in literary texts of that period and simultaneously in our own work. More specifically, my essay is interested in questions of ‘readability’ and the ‘crisis of reading’, as self-reflexively pronounced in two nineteenth century novels: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Frank Norris’s The Octopus. These novels, I argue, prefigure debates that are well-known to us and that materialize in the opposition between what Katherine Hayles has called “hyperreading” vs linear or immersive reading, between the New Critic’s formulation of close reading and what Franco Moretti has provocatively called “distant reading”, or the postcritical distinction between symptomatic and surface reading. By discussing different strategies of reading, the novels express the uncontrollability in view of increasing information environments. Yet, even if these webs of signification are elusive and at times dangerous, both novels, in a self-reflexive move, express a desire of writing the human reader into this web of signification and therefore to emphasize the significance of reading in an increasingly automated world.

The Sickle and the Piano. A Distant Reading of Work in the Nineteenth Century Romanian Novel

Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory ◽

10.24193/mjcst.2020.10.06 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 107-128

Author(s):

Ștefan Baghiu ◽

Cosmin Borza

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

19Th Century ◽

Civil Servant ◽

Semantic Search ◽

Physical Work ◽

The Novel ◽

Distant Reading ◽

Digital Museum ◽

Key Concepts ◽

The 19Th Century

This article conducts a semantic search of The Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel: The 19th Century (MDRR), through which the authors attempt to identify the occurrences of several key concepts for class and labour imagery in the nineteenth-century Romanian novel, such as “muncă” [labour/work], “muncitor” [labourer/worker], “țăran” [peasant], “funcționar” [civil servant], alongside two main words that strikingly point out to a dissemblance of representation of work: “seceră” [sickle] and “pian” [piano]. The authors show that physical work is underrepresented in the Romanian novel between 1844 and 1900, and that novelists prefer to participate to the rise of the novel through representing the bourgeois intimate space.

Suffering Daughters and Wives. Sentimental Themes in Finnish and Nordic Realism

Nordlit ◽

10.7557/13.1048 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 15 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Saija Isomaa

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Upper Class ◽

Henrik Ibsen ◽

Woman Question ◽

Main Claim ◽

Patriarchal Family ◽

Social Novels ◽

Love Triangle ◽

This article examines sentimental themes and scenarios in Nordic nineteenthcentury literature, focusing on Finnish realism. The main claim of the article is that the treatment of the Woman Question in Nordic literature is thematically connected to French sentimentalism that depicted upper-class women caught in the conflict between personal freedom and familial duties. Typical scenarios were family barrier to marriage and love triangle, in which an unhappily married woman fell in love with another man. French sentimental social novels took a stance on the position of women. Similar themes and scenarios can be found in Nordic nineteenth-century novels and plays. The ‘daughter novel’ tradition from Fredrika Bremer’s The President’s Daughters (1834) to Minna Canth’s Hanna (1886) depict the sufferings of upper-class girls in patriarchal family and society. A Doll’s House (1879) by Henrik Ibsen centers on the theme of conflicting duties, depicting the moral awakening of a doll-like wife, and Papin rouva (1893, ‘The Wife of a Clergyman’) by Juhani Aho concentrates on the sufferings and moral considerations of the unhappily married Elli. The article suggests that the sentimentalist legacy informs the Nordic nineteenth-century literature and should be taken into account in the scholarship.

Counting

Overwhelmed ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691192925.003.0004 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 108-164

Author(s):

Maurice S. Lee

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Information Overload ◽

Close Reading ◽

Distant Reading ◽

Historical Argument ◽

History Of ◽

Treasure Island ◽

Adventure Novels ◽

Century Literature

This chapter talks about penetration of quantification into literary discourse. Lovers of literature could resist information and wax nostalgic for the deserted island reading of their youths, but adventure novels of the long nineteenth century show how “the accounting of literature” could also be aesthetically enchanting. British and American adventure novels from the period register a productive tension: guided by atavistic, preindustrial texts, characters flee from civilized realms marked by information overload only to impose informational modernity on the deserted islands and lost worlds they find. The chapter also explores the limits and wonders of quantification by using a sustained multiscalar approach—a close reading of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, a literary-historical argument that draws on a dozen transatlantic adventure fictions, and a distant reading project based on keyword frequencies in a corpus of 105 adventure novels. The chapter does not only explain how nineteenth-century literature accommodated the rise of information but also the prospect that the digital humanities might begin to tell a deeper history of itself.

Sentimental Avatars: Gender Identification and Vehicles of Selfhood in Popular Media From Nineteenth-Century Novels to Modern Video Games

Games and Culture ◽

10.1177/1555412019879812 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 155541201987981

Author(s):

Lisa Mendelman ◽

Rabindra A. Ratan ◽

Joseph Fordham ◽

Megan Knittel ◽

Oskar Milik

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Popular Media ◽

Sex And Gender ◽

Embodied Experience ◽

Sentimental Literature ◽

Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽

Quantitative Studies ◽

And Gender ◽

This article examines how the embodied experience of contemporary avatar use overlaps with 19th-century American sentimental literature and cultural assumptions about gender and readerly identification in that period. Drawing on recent quantitative and qualitative research on avatar use and ongoing scholarship on nineteenth-century literature, we offer theoretical insights about the resonance between historical and contemporary understandings of media consumption as it intersects with cultural notions of sex and gender differences. Theories of sentimentalism help us to reconsider how gender is conceptualized in quantitative studies of avatars. Our cross-disciplinary study of embodiment and visceral experience thus argues for expanding modes of inquiry within quantitative games scholarship to more fully capture the interplay between gender identity and individual factors in avatar experiences. We conclude with three strategies for quantitative games scholars to consider as a means to enrich our understanding of the complexities of gender in modern game contexts.

The Affective Geography of Paris in the 19th Century Romanian Novel: Between Admiration and Aversion

Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory ◽

10.24193/mjcst.2020.10.07 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 129-147

Author(s):

David Morariu

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Big Data ◽

19Th Century ◽

Data Interpretation ◽

The Self ◽

Distant Reading ◽

Research Project ◽

Traditional Methods ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

The City

Based on “The Emotions of London”, a research project initiated at the Stanford Literary Lab, my article focuses on two relevant issues. First of all, I aim to demonstrate, as the “geography of emotions” experiment has already proved, that distant reading approaches and big data interpretation do not necessarily have to replace traditional methods of analysis. In other words, by using a corpus of 157 texts, I intend to outline the affective image of Paris as presented in the nineteenth century Romanian novel. Secondly, the aspect that makes my article different from “The Emotions of London” is that my purpose does not lie in analysing emotions associated with certain place-names in Paris, but with the overall image of the city, because Paris is an “abstract”, rather than a “concrete”, presence in the Romanian novel of this period. Another hypothesis that I will address is the interpretation of the emotions towards Paris, taking into account the two tendencies characteristic for the Romanian culture of the nineteenth century, namely the self-colonial tendency and the anti-colonial one.

Save or Spend? Western and Eastern Economic Discourses in Russian Fiction of the 19th Century

10.31168/4465-3095-3.01 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 13-45

Author(s):

Hans Günther ◽

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

19Th Century ◽

Max Weber ◽

Economic Discourse ◽

Special Position ◽

The World ◽

The One ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Century Literature

According to Max Weber, protestant ethics with its active secular asceticism had a decisive impact on the development of capitalist economics whereas the contemplative Orthodox tradition did not favor the idea of active domination of the world. The economic discourse of the Russian nineteenth century literature reflects the widely spread discussion about the future of Russia, which, compared to advanced Western capitalism, was in the position of periphery. On the one hand, authors are aware of the fact that the adoption of certain Western economic concepts is inevitable in Russia, yet on the otherhand they fear the loss of cultural identity. Gogol and Goncharov, the authors of such famous works as The Dead Souls or Oblomov, are inclined to approve certain elements of capitalist economy – they will be treated under the catchword «economize» –, whereas the idea of anti-economic «spending» of money is characteristic of Dostoevsky´s novels such as The Gambler or The Adolescent. A special position may be ascribed to Tolstoy’s economic «minimalism» which has its roots in peasant ideas of natural economy and Western authors like Proudhon or Rousseau.

Memes y Políticas de Identidad. El poder de la risa en la cultura digital

Arte y Políticas de Identidad ◽

10.6018/reapi.461201 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 23 ◽

pp. 144-162

Author(s):

Agnès García

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

19Th Century ◽

National Level ◽

Digital Culture ◽

Mass Society ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Two Sides

Una de las formas más arcaicas y evidentes de la comunicación es reír. En la cultura digital, las imágenes humorísticas, en concreto las satíricas, se unen a la sociedad de masas mediante la configuración de ideas e identidades. Durante el s. XIX, la identidad y el nacionalismo han sido dos caras de la misma moneda. Su representación por medio de símbolos e ideas siguen estando patentes en la actualidad. En el ámbito nacional, la identidad catalana no solo sigue teniendo una vinculación nacionalista propia del XIX, sino que ha devenido en un fenómeno de identidad propio unido asimismo al procés de independencia.Por eso mismo y con el objetivo de poner en relieve el poder de las imágenes humorísticas actuales, como son los memes, veremos cómo se convierten estas últimas, en expresiones de la memoria identitaria mediante el caso catalán. One of the most archaic and obvious forms of communication is laughter. In digital culture, humorous images, in particular satirical ones, they join in mass society through the configuration of ideas and identities. During the 19th century, identity and nationalism have been two sides of the same coin. Their representation through symbols and ideas are still evident today.At the national level, Catalan identity not only continues to have the nationalist connection typical of the nineteenth century, but it also became an identity phenomenon of its own, closely linked to the process for independence. For that reason, and with the aim of highlighting the power of current humorous images such as memes, we will see through the Catalan case how these images become the expressions of identity memory.

Talking like a servant: What nineteenth century novels can tell us about the social history of the language

Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics ◽

10.1515/jhsl-2016-0002 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 27-46 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jane Hodson

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Social History ◽

Literary Texts ◽

Linguistic Features ◽

Cultural Constructs ◽

Cultural Concepts ◽

The Social ◽

British Fiction ◽

History Of ◽

AbstractThis article investigates what nineteenth-century novels can tell us about the speech of the lower orders, using the “Dialect in British Fiction 1800–1836” database to focus specifically on how the speech of servants is represented. Recent work on enregisterment has led to a resurgence of interest in literary representations of dialect in relation to specific linguistic features and varieties. I argue that a sustained engagement with literary texts has the potential to illuminate wider cultural constructs of language variation, and that to accomplish this, attention must be paid to issues of genre as well as a range of stylistic features including speech representation, metalanguage and characterisation. The article concludes that, while novels are able to tell us little about how servants really spoke, they are a rich source of information about the attitudes and assumptions that underpinned cultural concepts such as “talking like a servant”.