The Study Of Franco Moretti’s Distant Reading

Franco Moretti is a theorist who uses an interdisciplinary approach to literary research.He draws inspiration from historical studies and proposes a "Distance Reading" approach,which synthesizes secondary documents and attempts to grasp the context of the development of world literature as a whole."Distance Reading" is a literary method accompanied by the world literary system.It was originally used by Moretti to reveal the law of the evolution of the world literary system.He believes that through "Distance",researchers can grasp the law of the development of world literature as a whole,and establish a long period of literary history.With the development of his theory,Moretti gradually introduced quantitative analysis and the analysis of character relationship network into "Distance Reading",completing the transformation from experiential data to data-based literary interpretation.This thesis is divided into three chapters to discuss Franco Moretti’s method of "Distance Reading".The introduction elaborates the purpose and significance of studying Moretti’s "Distance Reading" method,sorts out the research situation of Moretti’s "Distance Reading" method at home and abroad,and analyzes the relevant research to dig out the limitations.The first chapter analyzes the connotation of "Distance Reading".From "Close Reading" to "Distance Reading",the change of "Distance" implies that the research perspective shifts from local to whole,observing the development of literature in a long period of time and in a large range."Distance" is the core concept of "Distance Reading",which represents a state of knowledge.Since "Distance" is an abstraction and generalization of the text,"Distance Reading" represents a comprehensive state of knowledge that describes the whole.The second chapter explains distance reading as a research strategy--econometric analysis and personage relationship network."Distance Reading" is transformed from experiential knowledge to data knowledge by means of quantitative analysis and character relationship network.Quantitative analysis and character relation network generalize the quantitative relation and character relation network from the text,and combine these knowledge with market and narrative analysis,we can get the law of literature.The third chapter reveals the statistical significance of "Distance Reading"."Distance Reading" breaks the traditional research territory of close reading and breaks through the historical view of classical literature.On the basis of text data,Moretti used quantity to find problems,and used numerical values to explain problems and discover rules.His "Distance" research strategy with statistics as the core pushed forward the scientific research of literature.Mr.Moretti’s approach to literary research is statistical,quantifying emotion to some extent and likening statistical contingency to literary flexibility,which risks ossifying literary interpretation.