Literary change

Underwood, Ted

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/126039 Copy

Description

Title

Literary change

Author(s)

Underwood, Ted

Issue Date

2024-11-29

Keyword(s)

• Literary history
• Historical methodology
• Periodization
• Distant reading

Date of Ingest

2025-02-23T13:06:25-06:00

Abstract

Literary historians generally explain change by narrating it. Narrative history excels at identifying individual events, authors, and works that exemplify transformations of literary culture. On the other hand, narrative often struggles to represent continuous trends. Since numbers are designed to describe differences of magnitude, quantitative methods can trace a curve and give a more nuanced picture of gradual change. As quantitative methods have become more common in literary studies, it has become clear that many important aspects of literary history are in fact gradual processes extending over relatively long timelines. But there have also, certainly, been moments of rapid change – in some cases initiated by a single book or author. More crucially, readers seem to want the kind of meaning produced by narration. Thus, quantitative methods are never likely to entirely replace a periodized narrative; they merely provide an alternative mode of description.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

book chapter

Language

eng

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009349567.004

Copyright and License Information

Cambridge University Press

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