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Abstract

Drawing on ‘Formalism’ and ‘Structuralism’ literary theory, as well as ‘Serial History’ theory, Franco Moretti developed ‘Distant Reading’ around 15-20 years ago as a means of exploring the peripheries of world literature by utilizing formal media such as ‘Graph, Map, Tree’. The critical thought of reading at a distance has continued to be a significant strand of digital humanities research methodologies for so-called literary materials, providing insights into numerous sorts of research. This article examines the implications of ‘Distant Reading’ in Franco Moretti's world literature studies, and seeks to dissect that the fundamental awareness implied ‘Distant Reading’ derives from ‘asking questions’. In order to investigate the specific context in which the idea of ‘Distant Reading’ has been extended to the digital humanities research format, this article reviews six examples of digital humanities research on literary materials. These studies, including <Reading Traces>, <Derrida’s Margins>, <FBTEE>, <Shakespeare and Company>, <Lit Long>, and <Novel City Maps>, illustrate the recent evolution of textual reading as data-mediated questioning into various forms of digital humanities research and its implications. By designing a sophisticated data model, gathering data based on it, and analyzing and visualizing that data in order to uncover the cultural meanings embedded in a text, researchers can be thought of as going into a forest to examine individual trees in detail and then extending their understanding to encompass the forest as a whole. Conceived and attempted by Franco Moretti nearly 20 years ago, ‘Distant Reading’ gives insights into what it is ‘researching to ask questions, not to find answers’ for researchers seeking to try digital literary study through data even today.