Graphs, Maps, Trees
by Franco Moretti · first published 2007
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3HN commenters
2013–2026first – last mentioned
33% recommend67% neutral
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…a creative service for computational poets, and a service to computational literary critics. You may want to see work by Franco Moretti for a starting point here if you aren't familiar (particularly "Graphs Maps Trees", and "Distant Reading"). There's a nice review for starters in Wired from a few years ago. Moretti himself laments the lack of shared tools and resources (well--let's be honest, everyone doing this is…
on “Why We Need Poetry Technology” ↗…interest in quantitative approaches to the humanities lately. Try googling for J.E.H. Smith's proposal for a data-driven survey of world philosophy, or look into Franco Moretti's work on "distant reading" in Graphs, Maps, Trees. The latter was even profiled in the New York Times Magazine several years ago. I also like to trot out the example of Hugh Kenner, a protege of Marshall McLuhan who was one of the 20th century's great…
on “The Matasano Crypto Challenges” ↗…it's most likely one of these two: 1. *"Distant Reading"* (2013) — A collection of Moretti's essays that directly takes the concept as its title. This would fit well with "about a decade ago." 2. *"Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History"* (2005) — His earlier and very influential work that laid out the quantitative, computational approach to literary analysis, even if it didn't use "distant reading"…
on “Show HN: I used Claude Code to discover connections between 100 books” ↗