Distant Horizons
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A01=Ted Underwood
academic
aesthetic
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archives
Author_Ted Underwood
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSB
Category=GPF
change
close reading
college
COP=United States
critical
critique
data
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
digital
english major
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
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evidence
gender roles
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higher ed
historical
history
humanistic
information science
inquiry
Language_English
literary
literature
narratology
online
PA=Available
prestige
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
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statistics
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Product details
- ISBN 9780226612836
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 22 Mar 2019
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Just as a traveler crossing a continent won't sense the curvature of the earth, one lifetime of reading can't grasp the largest patterns organizing literary history. This is the guiding premise behind Distant Horizons, which uses the scope of data newly available to us through digital libraries to tackle previously elusive questions about literature. Ted Underwood shows how digital archives and statistical tools, rather than reducing words to numbers (as is often feared), can deepen our understanding of issues that have always been central to humanistic inquiry. Without denying the usefulness of time-honored approaches like close reading, narratology, or genre studies, Underwood argues that we also need to read the larger arcs of literary change that have remained hidden from us by their sheer scale. Using both close and distant reading to trace the differentiation of genres, transformation of gender roles, and surprising persistence of aesthetic judgment, Underwood shows how digital methods can bring into focus the larger landscape of literary history and add to the beauty and complexity we value in literature.
Ted Underwood is professor of information sciences and English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is also the author, most recently, of Why Literary Periods Mattered: Historical Contrast and the Prestige of English Studies.
