The Quiet Transformations of Literary Studies

What Thirteen Thousand Scholars Could Tell Us

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4270630
AutoresAndrew Goldstone, Andrew B Goldstone (0000-0002-2875-1290, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Ted Underwood (0000-0001-8960-1846)
Ano2014
Volume45
Fascículo3
Páginas359-384
Data de publicação2014-06-01
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoNew Literary History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X
EditoraProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/nlh.2014.0025
OpenAlexW2037510009
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas30
Referências citadas12

We use quantitative methods to analyze a collection of 21,367 scholarly articles in literary studies from 1889-2013. Our approach reveals aspects of our disciplinary history that have been occluded by existing histories' emphasis on generational and methodological conflict. We demonstrate gradual, unnoted shifts in the themes and vocabularies of scholarship-including the long rise of new subjects (like violence); we show the surprising novelty of central theoretical concepts; and we explore transformations in the shared rationales for literary scholarship that exceed the boundaries of conventional labels like "New Criticism" and "New Historicism." Though our method uses computational tools, we not claim to provide a definitive or objective perspective on disciplinary history; instead, our approach, like the related methods of content analysis in the social sciences, allows us to pursue nuanced interpretations of the language of many texts at once

Art · Criticism · Discipline · Epistemology · Historicism · Literary criticism · Literature · New Historicism · Novelty · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Computational and Text Analysis Methods · Computer Science · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology