Close Reading with Computers. Textual Scholarship, Computational Formalism and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

• Main Author: Al Refaei, Salma
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Authorship; Computational linguistics > Methodology; Computers; Criticism, Textual > Methodology > Computer programs; Digital humanities > Research > Methodology; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Formalism; Genre; History; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literary studies; Literature; Mitchell, David > (David Stephen). > Cloud atlas > Criticism, Textual; Narrative techniques; Narratives; Novels; Publishing; Publishing industry; Readers; Reading; Stoker, Bram (1847-1912); Writers; Writing processes
• ISSN: 2457-8827
• DOI: 10.21627/9781503609372

Textual Scholarship, Computational Formalism and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Stanford University Press, 2019, DOI: 10.21627/9781503609372, 271 p. The term "distant reading" is an approach to literary studies that applies reductive and labor-saving computational methods to literary data. Given the fact that more books are being published than one has the physical capacity to read in a lifetime, distant reading comes as a tool to help us cope with the amount of published work; in this sense it is an "antinecrotic practice" (3) as it staves off the limiting effects of death. What Martin Paul Eve proposes is a combination of the two, a "close reading with computers"; an approach that pivots between a telescopical and microscopical perspective and he achieves that by conducting a series of close reading exercises through computational methods, which alienates neither the reader from the text, nor the findings from mainstream literary criticism. The first chapter explores the two versions and how significant is the contrast between them, the second chapter concentrates on classifying Mitchell's work while focusing on the process of writing rather than the end result, in the third one he looks into what makes a literary work historical by analyzing the language used and in the last chapter he examines the reader's position in relation to the nature of interpretation.