Reading Machines: Toward and Algorithmic CriticismBesides familiar and now-commonplace tasks that computers do all the time, what else are they capable of? Stephen Ramsay's intriguing study of computational text analysis examines how computers can be used as "reading machines" to open up entirely new possibilities for literary critics. Computer-based text analysis has been employed for the past several decades as a way of searching, collating, and indexing texts. Despite this, the digital revolution has not penetrated the core activity of literary studies: interpretive analysis of written texts. Computers can handle vast amounts of data, allowing for the comparison of texts in ways that were previously too overwhelming for individuals, but they may also assist in enhancing the entirely necessary role of subjectivity in critical interpretation. Reading Machines discusses the importance of this new form of text analysis conducted with the assistance of computers. Ramsay suggests that the rigidity of computation can be enlisted in the project of intuition, subjectivity, and play. |
Contents
1 An Algorithmic Criticism | 1 |
2 Potential Literature | 18 |
3 Potential Readings | 32 |
4 The Turing Text | 58 |
5 Patacomputing | 69 |
Postconditions | 83 |
Notes | 87 |
| 91 | |
| 95 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Alfred Jarry algorithmic criticism allows alternative anagrams appear Busa chapter characters Ching concerned consider constraint context critical act critical reading cultural debate deformative Dickinson digital humanities discourse document space ELIZA engagement English ergodic literature explain fact Faustroll Fibonacci sequence frequency hermeneutical hexagram humanistic inquiry Humanities computing HyperPo imaginative insight interpretation Jarry’s Jerome McGann knowledge language linguistic lists literary criticism literary study literary-critical literature machine mathematical meaning metaphor method methodology Mueller narrative nature nomic notion novel object ofthe one’s Oulipian Oulipo pataphysics pattern perhaps poetic poetry possible potentiality precisely present procedures proposes Queneau’s question radical Raymond Queneau reader rhetorical Saussure Saussure’s scholars scientific Sedgwick sense sequence Shakespeare sonnet speaker Starobinsky structure suggest TAPoR tell text analysis text-analytical textual things thought experiment tion transformations truth Turing test vision vocabulary Wife’s Lament Woolf word