Ebook301 pages4 hours
Reductive Reading: A Syntax of Victorian Moralizing
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this ebook
“A masterful integration of digital humanistic approaches and more traditional close-reading methods . . . compelling, persuasive.” —Victorian Studies for the 21st Century
What is to be gained by reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch from an Excel spreadsheet, or the novels of Charles Dickens through a few hundred dialogue tags—those he said/she saids that bring his characters to life? Sarah Danielle Allison’s Reductive Reading argues that the greatest gift the computational analysis of texts has given to traditional criticism is not computational at all. Rather, one of the most powerful ways to generate subtle reading is to be reductive; that is, to approach literary works with specific questions and a clear roadmap of how to look for the answers.
Allison examines how patterns that form little part of our conscious experience of reading nevertheless structure our experience of books. Exploring Victorian moralizing at the level of the grammatical clause, she also reveals how linguistic patterns comment on the story in the process of narrating it. Delving into The London Quarterly Review, as well as the work of Eliot, Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, William Makepeace Thackeray, and other canonical Victorian writers, the book models how to study nebulous and complex stylistic effects.
A manifesto for and a model of how digital analysis can provide daringly simple approaches to complex literary problems, Reductive Reading introduces a counterintuitive computational perspective to debates about the value of fiction and the ethical representation of people in literature.
“A book that promises to transform the way we read novels.” —Elsie B. Michie, author of The Vulgar Question of Money
What is to be gained by reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch from an Excel spreadsheet, or the novels of Charles Dickens through a few hundred dialogue tags—those he said/she saids that bring his characters to life? Sarah Danielle Allison’s Reductive Reading argues that the greatest gift the computational analysis of texts has given to traditional criticism is not computational at all. Rather, one of the most powerful ways to generate subtle reading is to be reductive; that is, to approach literary works with specific questions and a clear roadmap of how to look for the answers.
Allison examines how patterns that form little part of our conscious experience of reading nevertheless structure our experience of books. Exploring Victorian moralizing at the level of the grammatical clause, she also reveals how linguistic patterns comment on the story in the process of narrating it. Delving into The London Quarterly Review, as well as the work of Eliot, Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, William Makepeace Thackeray, and other canonical Victorian writers, the book models how to study nebulous and complex stylistic effects.
A manifesto for and a model of how digital analysis can provide daringly simple approaches to complex literary problems, Reductive Reading introduces a counterintuitive computational perspective to debates about the value of fiction and the ethical representation of people in literature.
“A book that promises to transform the way we read novels.” —Elsie B. Michie, author of The Vulgar Question of Money
Related to Reductive Reading
Related ebooks
Transforming English Studies: New Voices in an Emerging Genre Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAdam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From History to Theory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rhetorical Minds: Meditations on the Cognitive Science of Persuasion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHaving People, Having Heart: Charity, Sustainable Development, and Problems of Dependence in Central Uganda Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Society: Anthropological Trajectories out of Oxford Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween Philosophy and Literature: Bakhtin and the Question of the Subject Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOsiris, Volume 30: Scientific Masculinities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Next Instalment: Serials, Sequels, and Adaptations of Nellie L. McClung, L.M. Montgomery, and Mazo de la Roche Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thinking Human's Etymologies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShakespearean Intersections: Language, Contexts, Critical Keywords Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSexual Violence at Canadian Universities: Activism, Institutional Responses, and Strategies for Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShakespeare's Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrimitive Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Death of Archaeological Theory? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Holocaust & the Exile of Yiddish: A History of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecognizing Persius Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClaude Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to be a historian: Scholarly personae in historical studies, 1800–2000 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistories of the Unexpected: World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBecoming Historians Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scandal Work: James Joyce, the New Journalism, and the Home Rule Newspaper Wars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Columbia Guide to the Holocaust Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Vernons of Hanbury Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Strange Texts: The Role of Theory in the Study of Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIndigenous Languages, Politics, and Authority in Latin America: Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Venetian Qur'an: A Renaissance Companion to Islam Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLGBTQ Cincinnati Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA History of English Philosophy: From Francis Bacon to Utilitarianism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cossacks: Their History and Country Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Criticism For You
Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Between the World and Me: by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Reductive Reading
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Reductive Reading - Sarah Allison
Cd book_preview_excerpt.html |ے70Feě.EzE,HqYͼ!#PERJf?u'?E_2ȬTƦU̸ p?~A<|,]hWp3]ve}.=M|/>^Kwynwmo?4>tml?6WW??ï|kބu밹?Z}3;cMW>[85y-Mo{[ӯ]w3=o\+kBkl'97|g5ߘ<2̓|7wbm^7=㣱v^Gn=7_nab=ne]hdwz$gz*ok
C]QUxj~
BmD35UYTɣ\[*_