The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History, Franco Moretti

Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History

Franco Moretti

In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of "distant reading" into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres--the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel--as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Verso
  • Publish Date: Sep 17th, 2007
  • Pages: 128
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.35in - 5.74in - 0.40in - 0.34lb
  • EAN: 9781844671854
  • Categories: Semiotics & TheoryComparative LiteratureSociology - General

About the Author

Franco Moretti teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of Signs Taken for Wonders, The Way of the World and Modern Epic, all from Verso.

Alberto Piazza is Professor Human Genetics at the Medical School of Turin University. He is a co-author of the History and Geography of Human Genes.

More books by Franco Moretti

Book Cover for: Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to Garcia Marquez, Franco Moretti
Book Cover for: The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture, Franco Moretti
Book Cover for: Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms, Franco Moretti
Book Cover for: The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature, Franco Moretti
Book Cover for: Atlas of the European Novel: 1800-1900, Franco Moretti
Book Cover for: Distant Reading, Franco Moretti
Book Cover for: Experimental Criticism: Franco Moretti and Literature, Franco Moretti

Praise for this book

"It's a rare literary critic who attracts so much public attention, and there's a good reason: few are as hell-bent on rethinking the way we talk about literature."--Times Literary Supplement

"The great iconoclast of literary criticism ... Moretti's discourse, as has often been noted, is marked by the same subtlety and unpredictability as his fellow Italian, Umberto Eco."--Guardian

"Mr. Moretti makes his most forceful case yet for his approach, a heretical blend of quantitative history, geography and evolutionary theory."--New York Times