When we think of a book, a novel, or anything we would like to know about and analyse we directly think of buying the book and reading it closely and carefully to be able to reflect on it and in order to get all the information we want whether it’s about the book or the author. Recently I have learned something new which is called “distant reading”. Distant reading was created by a literary scholar called Franco Moretti. It is not the usual type of reading, it is different and allows you to analyse a reading in a controversial way. There are too many books to read and some are too big to read so why not use a simpler way that can lead us to the same point that we want? Distant reading is based on patterns and objective data. Just like any other concept and creation, distant reading has specific advantages and disadvantages as well.
Two of the tools that I have used for distant reading were Voyant Tools and CLic. Voyant Tools and Clic are open-source websites that are used for distant reading and for analysing readings. Usually the scholars that are found on the websites are scholars in the field of digital humanities. Not only these websites can help writers analyse a book or any text they are researching, but also it can help students get an image about the text they want to read.
There are several advantages of distant reading and the first advantage that is most visible is that it saves time. Once you do distant reading, you don’t have to read a 500-page book to know what the book is talking about. Instead, you just have to find the topics and notions in the book to get a clear image about the text.
Second, computers are always accurate. For example, you might be analysing the style of the writer and to do that you want to look for specific words that the writer uses. A person can read so many books but might not be able to remember and to analyse every single word he/she read. However, a computer can do that without any errors. The computer can give you the exact number of times a word was written. Say that you know the writer is a feminist and that you want to see what words she uses to prove that. Distant reading will allow you to find how many times she used the word “She”, “Female” “Girl”, and many other words that while you read the book you will not be able to analyse.
However, one disadvantage about distant reading is that it does not show you what is not in the book. It will tell you all about what’s in the book and what the writer is talking about, but it cannot analyse and tell you what is NOT in the book.
I wanted to find a research question about Jane Austen’s readings but all I was able to think about were basic concepts that anyone can find by reading the book. While I was distant reading I found a notion that I didn’t think about before which was how much Jane Austen uses the notion of space in her writings, which helped me get to my research question.
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