Franco Moretti

The formation of an unorthodox literary critic How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficient? In the ten essays collected in this volume, Franco Moretti reconstructs the intellectual trajectory of his philosophy of ‘distant reading’. From the evolutionary model of ‘Modern European Literature’, through the geo-cultural dominant of ‘Conjectures on World Literature’ and ‘Planet Hollywood’ to the quantitative findings of ‘Style, inc.’ and the abstract patterns of ‘Network Theory, Plot Analysis’, the book follows two decades of critical explorations that have come to define – well beyond the wildest expectations of its author – a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.

Distant Reading

A manifesto for a text-free literary scholarship.

Abstract Models for a Literary History

Graphs, Maps, Trees

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.

Abstract Models for Literary History

between literature and history

The bourgeois

Matthew Jockers

Dominique Pestre

Michael Witmore

Long Le-Khac

Mark Algee-Hewitt

Ryan Heuser

Holst Katsma

Erik Steiner

Amir Tevel

Sarah Allison

Marissa Gemma

Irena Yamboliev

Hannah Walser

Studies in Quantitative Formalism

Canon/Archive

On the Sociology of Literary Forms (Radical Thinkers) (Radical Thinkers)

Signs Taken For Wonders

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, the theoretical influences over his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions. From the evolutionary model of “Modern European Literature,” through the geo-cultural insights of “Conjectures of World Literature” and “Planet Hollywood,” to the quantitative findings of “Style, inc.” and the abstract patterns of “Network Theory, Plot Analysis,” the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of “distant reading,” that has come to define—well beyond the wildest expectations of its author—a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.

The Dialectic of Fear

Il romanzo di formazione

Having coined a new term modern epic, the author analyses the phenomenon, & attempts to situate the works of e.g. Joyce, Proust & Musil within our literary tradition.

The World-system from Goethe to García Márquez

Modern Epic

«Gli studiosi di storia sociale hanno talvolta dei dubbi sul fatto che un bancario e un fotografo, o un costruttore di navi e un pastore, facciano realmente parte della stessa classe. Cosí è in Ibsen; o almeno, essi condividono gli stessi spazi e parlano la stessa lingua. Qui non c'è nulla del mascheramento della classe "media" inglese; questa non è una classe di mezzo, offuscata da quelle che le sono sopra, e ingenua riguardo al corso del mondo; questa è la classe dirigente, e il mondo è come è perché sono loro ad averlo reso tale. Ecco perché Ibsen si trova all'epilogo di questo libro: le sue opere teatrali sono il grande regolamento dei conti del secolo borghese, per usare una delle sue metafore. Ibsen è l'unico scrittore che guarda il borghese in faccia e gli chiede: Allora, dopotutto, che cosa hai portato al mondo?»

Il borghese

Giuseppe Episcopo

[English]: Literature in Laboratory is a collection of 12 Pamphlets published by the Stanford Literary Lab under the direction of its founder, Franco Moretti, from 2011 to 2017. Already translated into several languages, Moretti’s Literary Lab Pamphlets have opened up a new chapter in the fields of literary and digital studies by creating a new way of critically approaching texts. Moretti and his group of co-authors focused their experiments on the basic element by which literature is composed – namely, the language –, and conducted deep investigations on existing databases and unassisted corpus aiming at defining both a theoretical method and a precise technical procedure to be applied to literature. The essays presented in this book approach literature ranging from micro-linguistic dimensions to the larger scales of literary forms and genres through a series of quantitative measurements in order to increase, improve and develop a more precise understanding of ltheory and history of iterature. [Italiano]: La letteratura in laboratorio raccoglie 12 Pamphlet pubblicati dal Literary Lab dell’Università di Stanford sotto la direzione del suo fondatore, Franco Moretti, dal 2011 al 2017. Con i suoi lavori, già tradotti in diverse lingue, il Literary Lab di Moretti ha aperto un nuovo capitolo nel rapporto tra gli studi letterari e le risorse digitali dando vita a un nuovo approccio critico i testi. Moretti e il suo gruppo di co-autori hanno messo al centro dei loro esperimenti la letteratura nella materia da cui è costituita, il linguaggio, e hanno condotto approfondite indagini su banche dati esistenti e su corpus creati in modo autonomo. Franco Moretti ha arricchito gli studi letterari dando vita sia a un metodo teorico sia a una precisa procedura tecnica applicata alla letteratura. I saggi che compongono questa raccolta spaziano dalla dimensione microlinguistica a quella delle forme e dei generi attraverso una serie di analisi quantitative che permettono di accrescere, migliorare e rendere più precisa la comprensione della storia e della teoria della letteratura.

La letteratura in laboratorio

The formation of an unorthodox literary critic. How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficient? In the ten essays collected in this volume, Franco Moretti reconstructs the intellectual trajectory of his philosophy of ‘distant reading’. From the evolutionary model of ‘Modern European Literature’, through the geo-cultural dominant of ‘Conjectures on World Literature’ and ‘Planet Hollywood’ to the quantitative findings of ‘Style, inc.’ and the abstract patterns of ‘Network Theory, Plot Analysis’, the book follows two decades of critical explorations that have come to define – well beyond the wildest expectations of its author – a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.

The Novel

Nearly as global in its ambition and sweep as its subject, Franco Moretti's The Novel is a watershed event in the understanding of the first truly planetary literary form. A translated selection from the epic five-volume Italian Il Romanzo (2001-2003), The Novel's two volumes are a unified multiauthored reference work, containing more than one hundred specially commissioned essays by leading contemporary critics from around the world. Providing the first international comparative reassessment of the novel, these essential volumes reveal the form in unprecedented depth and breadth--as a great cultural, social, and human phenomenon that stretches from the ancient Greeks to today, where modernity itself is unimaginable without the genre. By viewing the novel as much more than an aesthetic form, this landmark collection demonstrates how the genre has transformed human emotions and behavior, and the very perception of reality. Historical, statistical, and formal analyses show the novel as a complex literary system, in which new forms proliferate in every period and place. Volume 2: Forms and Themes, views the novel primarily from the inside, examining its many formal arrangements and recurrent thematic manifestations, and looking at the plurality of the genre and its lineages. These books will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literature.

Forms and Themes

The Novel, Volume 2

“The bourgeois ... Not so long ago, this notion seemed indispensable to social analysis; these days, one might go years without hearing it mentioned. Capitalism is more powerful than ever, but its human embodiment seems to have vanished. ‘I am a member of the bourgeois class, feel myself to be such, and have been brought up on its opinions and ideals,’ wrote Max Weber, in 1895. Who could repeat these words today? Bourgeois ‘opinions and ideals’—what are they?” Thus begins Franco Moretti’s study of the bourgeois in modern European literature—a major new analysis of the once-dominant culture and its literary decline and fall. Moretti’s gallery of individual portraits is entwined with the analysis of specific keywords—“useful” and “earnest,” “efficiency,” “influence,” “comfort,” “roba”—and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. From the “working master” of the opening chapter, through the seriousness of nineteenth-century novels, the conservative hegemony of Victorian Britain, the “national malformations” of the Southern and Eastern periphery, and the radical self-critique of Ibsen’s twelve-play cycle, the book charts the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and for its current irrelevance.

Between History and Literature

The Bourgeois

Nearly as global in its ambition and sweep as its subject, Franco Moretti's The Novel is a watershed event in the understanding of the first truly planetary literary form. A translated selection from the epic five-volume Italian Il Romanzo (2001-2003), The Novel's two volumes are a unified multiauthored reference work, containing more than one hundred specially commissioned essays by leading contemporary critics from around the world. Providing the first international comparative reassessment of the novel, these essential volumes reveal the form in unprecedented depth and breadth--as a great cultural, social, and human phenomenon that stretches from the ancient Greeks to today, where modernity itself is unimaginable without the genre. By viewing the novel as much more than an aesthetic form, this landmark collection demonstrates how the genre has transformed human emotions and behavior, and the very perception of reality. Historical, statistical, and formal analyses show the novel as a complex literary system, in which new forms proliferate in every period and place. Volume 1: History, Geography, and Culture, looks at the novel mostly from the outside, treating the transition from oral to written storytelling and the rise of narrative and fictionality, and covering the ancient Greek novel, the novel in premodern China, the early Spanish novel, and much else, including readings of novels from around the world. These books will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literature.

History, Geography, and Culture

The Novel, Volume 1

The Way of the World has been widely acclaimed for its unique combination of narrative theory and social history. This new edition includes an additional final chapter on the collapse of the Bildungsroman in the years around the First World War (a crisis which opened the way for Modernist experimentation), and a new preface in which the author looks back at The Way of the World in light of his more recent work.

Franco Moretti

About

Books

Join the club