First Encounters with Franco Moretti

We began week five of this course with a sustained examination of Franco Moretti’s Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (Verso, 2007). After each of you went off to try and master a chapter of this work (the resulting board work hastily captured by phone camera, above), you came back and created a sample piece, inspired by your assigned chapter, and based on a literary work you know well.

Mapping Sansa Stark’s Travels and Experiences in A Game Of Thrones

The results were naturally unique, but in all cases, you managed to collect data from your source text and successfully visualize it.

Graphing Jane’s Use of Slave & Abolitionist Language Over The Course of Jane Eyre

While this wasn’t a digital project per se, it was inspired by those sets of principles that have guided and/or arisen from Moretti’s own work, and the work of the Stanford Literary Lab.

A “Close-Up Space” Character/Relationships Tree

And whether or not you choose to use a graph, map, or tree in your digital thesis project, I hope that engaging with Moretti’s spatial approach to literary analysis can be a source of inspiration.

P.S. We’re going to make maps and graphs and trees again later this semester, so keep your copy of the book handy. 🙂