Distance and History

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers distance and history in terms of digital literary studies. For many years now, more contemporary fiction has been published every year than a single person can read in a lifetime. The implications of such overproduction for literary history are enormous. Field mastery by a single individual is impossible and the systematizing dreams of the early Russian formalists seem far out of reach. Statistical reading methods have been billed as a potential way to overcome these human limitations. If we cannot read enough ourselves, perhaps, it is posited, we could delegate this work to the machines. After an introduction to digital-textual media studies, this chapter examines the recent advances in computational modelling with key examples from Andrew Piper and Ted Underwood.