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Weiye Loh

Victorian Literature, Statistically Analyzed With New Process - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04victorian.html

Literature Statistics Content Analysis

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • The titles of every British book published in English in and around the 19th century — 1,681,161, to be exact — are being electronically scoured for key words and phrases that might offer fresh insight into the minds of the Victorians.
  • This research, which has only recently become possible, thanks to a new generation of powerful digital tools and databases, represents one of the many ways that technology is transforming the study of literature, philosophy and other humanistic fields that haven’t necessarily embraced large-scale quantitative analysis.
  • There is also anxiety, however, about the potential of electronic tools to reduce literature and history to a series of numbers, squeezing out important subjects that cannot be easily quantified.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Some scholars are wary of the control an enterprise like Google can exert over digital information. Google’s plan to create a voluminous online library and store has raised alarms about a potential monopoly over digital books and the hefty pricing that might follow. But Jon Orwant, the engineering manager for Google Books, Magazines and Patents, said the plan was to make collections and searching tools available to libraries and scholars free. “That’s something we absolutely will do, and no, it’s not going to cost anything,” he said.
  • Mr. Houghton sought to capture what he called a “general sense” of how middle- and upper-class Victorians thought, partly by closely reading scores of texts written during the era and methodically counting how many times certain words appeared. The increasing use of “hope,” “light” and “sunlight,” for instance, was interpreted as a sign of the Victorians’ increasing optimism.
Nyssa Silvester

The Business Rusch Publishing Series | Kristine Kathryn Rusch - 0 views

kriswrites.com/...siness-rusch-publishing-series

publishing digital age ebooks writing

shared by Nyssa Silvester on 04 May 11 - No Cached
  • Nyssa Silvester on 04 May 11
     
    For anyone who wants to get an extended analysis about the effects of the Digital Age on publishing, this is a great place to start if you have the time.
Weiye Loh

Victorian Literature, Statistically Analyzed With New Process - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...04victorian.html

Literature Statistics Content Analysis

shared by Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • A decline in references to “God,” “Christian” and “universal” is consonant with the conventional view that the 19th century was a time of rising secularism and skepticism.
  • Yet large searches can also challenge some pet theories of close reading, he said: for example, that the Victorians were obsessed with the nature and origins of evil. As it turns out, books with the word “evil” in the title bumped along near the bottom of the graph, accounting for less than 0.1 percent — a thousandth — of those published during the Victorian era.
  • As Mr. Cohen is quick to acknowledge, the meaning of those numbers is anything but clear. Perhaps authors didn’t like to use the word “evil” in the title; perhaps there were other, more common synonyms; perhaps the context points to another subject altogether.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Ms. Martin at Princeton knows firsthand how electronic searches can unearth both obscure texts and dead ends. She has spent the last 10 years compiling a list of books, newspaper and journal articles about the technical aspects of poetry. She recalled finding a sudden explosion of the words “syntax” and “prosody” in 1832, suggesting a spirited debate about poetic structure. But it turned out that Dr. Syntax and Prosody were the names of two racehorses.
  • Weiye Loh on 04 Dec 10
     
    A decline in references to "God," "Christian" and "universal" is consonant with the conventional view that the 19th century was a time of rising secularism and skepticism.
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