Distant reading, an empirical and quantitative approach in literary studies proposed by Franco Moretti, has raised a lively debate and attracted criticisms from "traditional literary scholars." An important reason behind these criticisms is the need for solid theoretical foundations: distant reading is perhaps the first methodology in literary studies that do not include a specific theory of literature, an ontology of the literary. Much of the work in the field derives its theoretical frameworks from the literary theories of the twentieth-century tradition, based on the assumption that literary texts can be understood through reading and interpretation. A large-scale quantitative approach to literary and cultural phenomena is mainly incompatible with "the hermeneutic attitude" and traditional theories. Therefore, I propose a convergence with cognitive and bio-evolutionary approaches to literature and studies of cultural evolution and a shift from "interpretation" to "explanation" as the goal of computational literary studies.
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0001-9604-5980
Chapter Title
Una nuova svolta negli studi letterari: la convergenza tra computazione, cognizione ed evoluzione
Authors
Fabio Ciotti
Language
Italian
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0045-5.04
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2022
Copyright Information
© 2022 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
La narrazione come incontro
Editors
Fabio Ciotti, Carmela Morabito
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
174
Publication Year
2022
Copyright Information
© 2022 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0045-5
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0044-8
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0045-5
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0046-2
Series Title
Moderna/Comparata
Series ISSN
2704-5641
Series E-ISSN
2704-565X