“Digital Humanities” – a New Theoretical Paradigm?
This paper tries to give a survey on a pilot discipline – Digital Humanities – that tries to apply computational methods to literary study. Franco Moretti, Vincent Miller or Matthew L. Jockers are the pioneers of a theoretical model concerned with the possibility of distant reading or macroanalysis. The advantages, but also the risks of this theoretical framework, are subject of analysis. The new methods give a better account of global phenomena in the history of literature (aiming at restructuring the world canon), but they cannot omit the problem of subjectivity in hermeneutics. Despite its scientific premises, digital analysis is dependent on the theoretical input of the researcher.
Keywords: digital humanities, distant reading, macroanalysis, literary history, cantitative study, hermeneutics
1. A se vedea, în acest sens, dezbaterile din volumele colective Michael P. Clark (ed.), The Place of Literature in Theory Today, Berkeley-Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2000, dar și mai recentul Michael Berube (ed.), The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2005;
2. Pentru un istoric complet al centrelor și instituțiilor metodei computaționale a se vedea Kenneth M. Price, Ray Siemens, Literary Studies in the Digital Age. Introduction, pe platforma http://dlsanthology.commons.mla.org.
3. Franco Moretti, Distant Reading, London, Verso, 2013, p. 43.
4. Ibidem, p. 44.
5. Ibidem, p. 104.
6. Matthew L. Jockers, Macroanalysis. Digital Methods and Literary History, Chicago-Springfield, University of Illinois Press, 2013.
7. Cf. David Damrosch, What is World Literature?, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003;
8. Thomas Rommel, Literary Studies, în Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth (eds.), A Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, p. 87.
9. Ibidem, p. 90.
