Kirschenbaum begins his exploration of DH by posing a quote from selfe.  She writes, “As a profession, we are just learning how to live with computers…”.  Whatever the digital humanities are at this point in time does not mean that this definition will continue.  As a number of different candidates for a position in the digital humanities have passed through Clemson, I find myself more confused about what DH “is”. 

Kirchenbaum equates DH to “humanities computing”, which looks a lot like (in some ways?) Katherine Hayles notion of machine reading and Moretti’s ideas of data mining and “distance reading”.  Much of the digital humanities are not concerned with composing new arguments or analyzing any one argument, but rather they are concerned with analyzing an entire corpus or writing code to do analysis for you. 

Perhaps  in the past most of my notions of DH have come from professors who value the digital and employ it in their research and using pedagogy.  But, many of those who have become more familiar to me recently seem to be using DH for more empirical means.  I feel that this should be resisted. 

While it is a given that at some point in time (hopefully?) at least some (more) consensus will be gained about what DH is.  Kirschenbaum explains that because of the openness of many English departments to teaching culture and literature and literacy and many other things aside that DH or some new brand of literacy can fit.  Based on Moretti’s work with DH and distance reading in particular, I can see some utility in the process, but I am very resistant of limiting DH to some particular aspect of the humanities.

As a “new” and often undefined term, digital humanities is an opportunity for scholars to self identify.  Much of my resistance comes from the idea that some scholars would try to keep others off of their “DH” jungle gym because they disagree with the kind of work that they are doing.  I love that a Wikipedia article is cited in this piece.  In other works perhaps that would be less appropriate, but the fact that it works for this work seems important to me.  

From Epic to free verse: poem evolution

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Reading through Franco Morettii’s Graphs, Maps, Trees made me think of the evolution of poems as a form of literary production. In his book, Moretti states that politis plays a major role in the repression of books publishing, and book trade. If one make a chart of the literary production there are other cultural reasons for the rise and down of a certain literary genre. By taking into consideration the factors that may play a role in the changes of the poem form, from the popular long poems and epics to the modern short poems, one can see the parallel process of the development in poetry and technology, which has a direct affect too. For example if we think of the time and environment, old poems tend to be long because they were suitable for the simple life of the time. People had the time to meditate, listen and enjoy such a long production. Unlike the age of printing and the medieval age , where life begun to be more complex, and publishing enabled people to have access to wide range of reading, poets began to write shorter poems that are easier to be published and faster to be read. The following video is a summary of Beowolf epic; it is presented with the help of the new technologies that served to summaries the long poem that is unreliable to be read in our hyper reading age.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SiarUS3ddA&feature=related

            Another thing to be noticed about the poem, is the change of its verse from the dominant theme of being rhymed into the modern free verse. This doesn’t mean the decline of the rhyme, but rather the emergence of a new kind of poems that is free of this condition. The poems were mostly written to be read loudly, that’s why they tend to be musical to the air. But, the modern developing technologies enabled a new kind of poetry to be emerged, and that the aesthetic value of the verse is tend to be in its abstract merits rather than in the form. In this video a poem called Silence is an example of where the poem is going to in the modern life; the poet uses artifact that contains images and music, which helps to illustrate the lines of the poem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wjhqmGlOzI&feature=related
as we see, by relating the word to an image, thepoem is turning into a visual peice that is interesing to be read although it lacks a ristrict rhythmatic  form.

Out with Theory, In with...Literary Historiography?

Upon receiving Graphs, Maps, Trees in the mail at the beginning of the semester, I found myself a bit bothered by the description on the back: “Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead.”  Not exactly music to my English-majory ears.  However, I found that Moretti is presenting another way to learn about literature, and while I continue to have a problem with his push for this quantitative method of study to replace our current methods, I still found what he had to say useful.  In this work, Moretti uses abstract models of things like quantitative history and geography, things that we typically don’t associate with literary criticism but instead provide a “more rational literary history” (4).  As much as I wanted to resist this book full of numbers and maps – two things with which I am particularly inept – Moretti convinced me that it would be worth my while.

First of all, it became clear to me just how limited my scope of “literary knowledge” is.  I’ve spent so much time in English classes studying the canon, learning about the “influential” books and theories that have come to shape my understanding of literature, that I’ve failed to see the grand scheme of things.  What does it really mean to say a book or novel is “influential”? Moretti helped me realize that to make a claim about influence on literature is to put our trust into the remarks and claims of the readers and authors, which is a problem because these people are just as fluctuating and vast as “quantified” literary history is.  Moretti’s use of graphs, maps, and trees lets us see major trends across the whole spectrum of literature.

Yet I still resisted.  Last semester in our Theory & Criticism class, I saw how each new theory to come along claimed to be better than the one before it, always being re-invented as the best lens through which to view literature.  I found myself always wondering, Why do we need to choose one?  For some people, certain theories get them where they need to go, and Moretti’s graphs, maps, and trees get him to a redefinition of literary history and aesthetic form.  I think his method for viewing literature is invaluable to the field of literary studies, but why suggest that it should replace all previous methods and theories?  Moretti writes toward the end of the book,

‘Theories are nets’, wrote Novalis, ‘and only he who casts will catch.’ Yes, theories are nets, and we should evaluate them, not as ends in themselves, but for how they concretely change the way we work: for how they allow us to enlarge the literary field, and re-design it in a better way, replacing the old, useless distinctions…with new temporal, spatial, and morphological distinctions.  (91)

When he puts it that way, I guess I would have to agree.  He doesn’t necessarily want us to continue to use the theory, but would instead have us examine the theory as a thing itself and as a shaper of the quantitative literary history.  It’s kind of neat, really, how Moretti is able to step away from our theory-based literary studies and suggest we have a look at the way our studies have shaped our studies.  It seems an appropriate path of inquiry for those of us looking to keep up with the advancement of literature.

Dis is a gr8 article!

N. Katherine Hayles presents an interesting contrast between close reading of print literature and text and digital reading in her essay entitled "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine." She argues that close reading is the very practice that gives value to the literary discipline, and it is diminished when one converts to digital reading. This "screen reading of digital materials" creates a problem, particularly among those in junior high up through graduate school, for these individuals are reading printed text less well since their reading skills in general are on the decline (62). This overall idea makes me think of Facebook and other forms of social media where it is commonly accepted, if not expected, to deliberately misspell words and to use improper grammar. (Can I say 'to butcher the English language' on here?) Furthermore, these forms of social media are used as outlets to procrastinate and hinder those individuals from doing real work, from reading actual print literature and doing such close readings that Hayles outlines in her essay. Yet, it is interesting that these various types of social media also include applications on their websites with texts similar to scholarly articles, even texts similar to highly revered (or at least well-known) newspapers. Take, The Washington Post Social Reader, for example. It provides its readers with various topics that one would encounter in the actual newspaper or perhaps CNN. But here's the catch--it is on Facebook. This creates a digital atmosphere for its readers, therefore altering the way the brain reads and processes the information since individuals read in the shape of the letter 'F' when viewing digital texts rather than the traditional z-line. According to Hayles, much information is lost towards the end because viewers are looking more towards the left side of the screen rather than all the way across.

This adoption of newspaper articles--what I would consider more than just mindless reading--on digital interfaces and social media makes me consider Hayles's words in a different sense, reconsidering if at least some, not all, of these articles on the application are not very ingenious. I would never utilize them in an essay, they are not scholarly, I would certainly go to CNN or a more credible source for more information; yet, I still felt like they hold some credibility and would require some thinking. The conclusion I can draw after reading Hayles is that although I would not close-read these articles--or anything on a social media interface, for that matter--the traditional print medium, particularly of literature and scholarly texts, is the better alternative. It allows room for close readings, more thinking, and innovative thought. I believed this all along. Yet, Hayles's article made me realize that there is, in a sense, a dark gray area, and I think this social reader, for example, is one of them.

The art of graphs

Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, and Trees is a book that exemplifies the vast potential of charting texts in the realm of literary criticism.  It seems to me that in the digital humanities this has become an especially interesting area because with the aid of new technologies charting extremely large data sets has become possible.  One interesting comment that Moretti makes involves the importance of group analysis as opposed to individual analysis (4).  He relates this to the reader in terms of historical studies, emphasizing the potential of literary history as a means to heighten critical analyses through the simplified models of graphs, maps, and trees.  This is interesting, and while I do not disagree with Moretti here, it is important to note how imperative it is for a researcher to properly designate these groups if accurate depictions are to be made. 

One way to clarify the importance of accurate and truly representative grouping is to consider the ancient Chinese text, The Art of War.  Originally, this text was comprised of a relatively small number of comments made by the famous Chinese general Sun Tzu, but as the text grew in importance throughout the ages because of its apt teachings on military strategy and leadership, other of China’s well known and successful generals began to add their commentary as well.  Today, copies of The Art of War come with these other generals comments layered in on the pages with Sun Tzu’s original commentary, and the result is an amalgamation of China’s greatest military strategists ideas as they follow and evolve from the original authors.  If one were to graph these generals and to measure their successes in the chart, then it would likely appear that SunTzu’s philosophies were so astute that they have inspired nothing but success.  This is a problem.

The problem is not that so many generals have followed in Sun Tzu’s footsteps by adding to and amending his writings, but since the text has been so influential in terms of its acceptance as a military guidebook (taught in military academies around the world) there have been many unsuccessful generals that have adopted and enacted Sun Tzu’s teachings as well.  If the graph only consisted of those generals included in the work, then a false depiction of the history of Sun Tzu’s strategies would be the product.  This is not so different from any other type of statistical fallacies that are so often encountered in charts of this kind, and it is crucial that those interested in literary research of this kind understand both their subject and statistics.  In the end, I think that Moretti makes good use of his charts and data sets, but if considered closely enough certain fallacies can be found in them as well.  For instance, in his graph of literary genres, in which he tries to chart the emergence and decline of genre types, I’m not so sure that he allows for trend cycles that include the potential for genre comebacks or tapering interests.  This is a definite issue with this type of research, but as the digital humanities progress and technology becomes better at allowing for this kind of confounding variable, accuracy should improve.

Graphing Literary History

Considering Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps and Trees, I tried to think of a way in which one of these mechanisms could provide a way for me to better understand the world of literary theory and criticism.  According to Moretti, “all great theories of the novel have precisely reduced the novel to one basic form only (realism, the dialogic, romance, meta-novels…); and if the reduction has given them their elegance and power, it has also erased nine tenths of literary history.  Too much” (30).  This reduction seems particularly problematic because it limits certain texts to critical inquiry within a certain field.  If texts were considered for their social impact at large, rather than their contribution to a specific genre, it seems that there might be more that could be understood about the nature of text, writing and writing on a larger scale.  Widening the scope of critical analysis, then, seems enabled by the graphs proposed by Moretti.

Using graphs might enable critics to think about reading in a way that is not so closely tied with the canon.  Rather than consistently considering the texts which have, for one reason or another, persisted in popularity and continually made the curricula for high school English classes and the syllabi in English college courses, graphs present a way of thinking about reading without specifically considering these canonical texts.  As the canon itself has come under fire given the rise of feminism, civil rights, post colonialism (and any other –ism I am forgetting at present), it seems that only exploring these texts critically is ultimately doing a disservice to the less conventional texts not written exclusively by white men. 

With this thought in mind, I feel that a graph could be applied to Lee Morrissey’s article “Re-reading Reading in Eighteenth-Century Literary Criticism.”  In this article, Morrissey explores the political atmosphere which deemed the acceptability of reading at large as well as the types of text which were tolerable to read at a given moment.  Considering various arguments regarding reading, Morrissey explains differences in opinions which resulted in the changing popularity of reading throughout the eighteenth century.  Discussing Hooke’s stance on reading, Morrissey writes that “For Hooke’s, texts represent the man-made in general; in their dirty irregularities they show ‘the dangers in the process of human reason, the remedies of them all can only proceed from the real, the mechanical, the experimental philosophy’” (166).  Similarly, Morrissey discusses Sprat and Dryden’s aversion to complicated textual passages and “swellings of style” (166).  Morrissey also notes contributions by Locke and Pope, who suggested that words have no natural meaning and that meaning can be garnered through channeling the spirit of the author, respectively. 

With so many opinions on the concept of reading and textual influence, it seems that a graph may be helpful in sketching out the conflicts and comparisons which coincide with publishing and the popularity of books at a given moment in history.  Rather than tracking the popularity of one specific text, looking at the popularity of reading might actually provide some insight into the ways in which politics shape the way that people read as well as the types of texts which are published.  This type of graph seems to have larger political ramifications than does a close of reading of say, Hawthorne.

Judge a Book by Its Cover

A few years ago, one of my good friends was helping me and my wife move into our new apartment and she offered to organize our bookshelf. Being unorganized people who own a lot of books, we were glad to let her do it. Once she was finished, I walked over to the bookshelf curious to see the system of organization she had employed: genre, author, date, etc. After I stared at our books for a few minutes and failed to notice a consistent theme, I turned to our friend and asked her how she had organized them. She said, “aesthetically.” I turned back to the bookshelf and immediately understood. The books were sorted according to color, height, width, and every other detail about a book besides its actual content. On the Road sat next to a copy of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and it looked perfectly appropriate.

Franco Moretti’s book Graphs, Maps, Trees (along with the Hayles readings from two weeks ago) got me thinking about this incident again and the ways that this new system of classification may tell me something new about my library. Although my bookshelf has since reverted to its normal state of disorganization, I still recall certain sections of color and height and that may be enough for the purposes of this blog. Discussing the benefits of a more “bird’s eye view” approach to literary history, Moretti writes in his section Graphs that “this process can only be glimpsed at the level of the cycle: individual episodes tend, if anything, to conceal it, and only the abstract pattern reveals the true nature of the historical process” (29). I think the aesthetic realignment of my bookshelf forced me to reconsider my collection not in light of “individual episodes”, such as phases in my literary tastes, but rather as an “abstract pattern” that in its arbitrariness foregrounded the materiality of my library. I had never considered questions such as: “Why do I own so many white and black books?” and “Do publishers make more white and black books than other colors?”.  These were interesting questions, but perhaps the most revealing moment came when I realized that somehow all of my favorite books were in a section on the top shelf at the smaller end of the size spectrum and most of them had neutral colors. Although it may seem like an obvious connection, I had never considered how my taste in a book might possibly be influenced by something as seemingly superficial as its length or its appearance. This got me thinking in a chicken and egg sort of way: Is it the book’s shape and color that makes me enjoy it more or is it just a coincidence that the type of books I like happen to be made in this style? The more I think about these questions the less I see a difference in them. It is in this way that I see a connection to Hayles’ ideas about the materiality of the text and how a book’s form can affects its content, an action that takes place both ways with the content of the book influencing its eventual form and the form of previous books influencing the content of future books. Thus, the next time somebody asks me if they think I might like a new book, it might be more apt to ask them what it looks like rather than who wrote it.