The Novel

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This broad-ranging survey on the history and form of the novel combines traditionalliterary analysis (close reading) with the "distant reading" approaches enabled by recently developed digital techniques. In other words, while we will likely spend hours discussing and analyzing one or two short passages from a single novel, we will also learn how to use computers to "read" hundreds or thousands of novels in a matter of minutes. So-called distant reading involves aggregating and analyzing data about a large number of individual texts. While conventional literary analysis will remain an important part of what we do, computational or quantitative methods can provide insights that we never could have gained from reading books one by one. Nonetheless, during the semester we will give close attention to a small number of canonical novels, with an emphasis on Irish fiction. Some of the books we may read include Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent and James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Almost from the very moment the novel emerged as a distinct genre, there have been more novels published than any one person could ever hope to read. In the late eighteenth century a new novel was published, on average, every single week; in 2010 over 50,000 new novels were published ? more than anyone could read in a lifetime. How do we keep up? Can we really understand the novel by giving close attention to just a handful of books? What can computational approaches to literature tell us that close reading can't? Moreover, can we combine close and distant reading in a way that enhances our understanding of literature, and the novel in particular? In this course we will attempt to answer these and other questions. Along the way, we will learn how to perform various kinds of text mining, such as named entity extraction, sentiment analysis and topic modeling. We will also learn how to put certain kinds of data into visual form, discussing both the benefits and limitations of such techniques. No prior technical expertise is required and ample instruction in using various digital tools will be provided.