Martin Paul Eve

Close Reading with Computers

Textual Scholarship, Computational Formalism, and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Rather than working at the usual scales of distant reading, this book shows what happens when we bring techniques from the digital humanities to bear on a single novel for close readings.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. Juni 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 236mm x 175mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 422g
• ISBN-13: 9781503609365
• ISBN-10: 1503609367
• Artikelnr.: 53537532

Autorenporträt

Martin Paul Eve is Professor of Literature, Technology, and Publishing at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a winner of the 2019 Philip Leverhulme Prize, sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Close Reading, Computers, and Cloud Atlas
chapter abstract
This introductory chapter outlines the history of close reading and its
perceived conflict with new distant-reading techniques. Focusing on the
controversies that have surrounded the digital humanities with respect to
close textual attention, this chapter argues that, in fact, distant- and
close-reading paradigms are not so far separated as one might believe. As
well as introducing the text on which the book is centered, this chapter
also outlines the overarching metaphors of the entire book: the
computational microscope and close-textual digital microscopy.
1The Contemporary History of the Book
chapter abstract
This chapter shows that, in 2003, David Mitchell's editor at the US branch
of Random House moved from the publisher, leaving the American edition of
Cloud Atlas without an editor for approximately three months. Meanwhile,
the UK edition of the manuscript was undergoing a series of editorial
changes and rewrites that were never synchronized back into the US edition
of the text. When the process was resumed at Random House under the
editorial guidance of David Ebershoff, changes from New York were likewise
not imported back into the UK edition. This chapter uses a range of
visualization techniques to document the substantial differences between
the editions.
2Reading Genre Computationally
chapter abstract
This chapter considers what it means to appraise genre with the aid of
computers. For David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas contains six different and
distinct generic registers. The first segment in this chapter explores the
assumptions and limitations of computational stylometry. The second part
examines computationally the linguistic mechanisms that create Mitchell's
genre effects. The third part compares the seafaring parts of Mitchell's
novel with the writings of Herman Melville, using Burrows's delta method.
Finally, this chapter turns to a part-of-speech trigram visualization and
analysis to pinpoint how the microlinguistic changes throughout this text
contribute to the genre effects of each section.
3Historical Fiction and Linguistic Mimesis
chapter abstract
This chapter asks what it can mean to write as though in some bygone
period. Specifically, this chapter addresses issues of mimetic accuracy in
historical fiction that purports to come from a particular time frame. For
the first section of Cloud Atlas purports to be set around 1850. This
chapter argues, though, for the construction of a stylistic historical
imaginary of this period's language that is not based on mimetic
etymological accuracy. Using word-dating tools, I argue that there are
political implications to the "puncturing" of linguistic accuracy in this
chapter for our consideration of the novel and its colonial rhetorics, a
fact that I consider by cross-comparison of word frequencies with the COCA
text-base.
4Interpretation
chapter abstract
This final chapter takes the preceding computational analyses in the book
and synthesizes the results into a close reading of Cloud Atlas that
focuses on the idea of the object-mediated "archive" as central to the
novel's depiction of alternation between the historically unique and the
pattern-making efforts of historiography. In terms chapter 1's analysis of
textual variance, this chapter notes that the section with the most obvious
alterations is the part of the narrative where an archivist attempts to
store the voice of a death-penalty convict for posterity. Yet, in the
novel's transtextual variance, these editions are different, thereby
undoing the preservation effect that such an archive is supposed to have.
Finally, this chapter argues that Mitchell's novel contains within it a
clear critique of Francis Fukuyama's well-known "end of history" thesis.
Conclusion
chapter abstract
This chapter briefly remarks on the future of textual studies and digital
approaches to the close study of literature. It closes the book by noting
the media storms that are whipped up around the claimed digital "threat"
while also pointing out that, in fact, the garnering of empirical evidence
has been a long-standing feature of close reading and that computational
methods can help us to see a work more clearly.