Stanford Literary Lab Pamphlet 4

Dear Prof. Liu,

Ryan Heuser’s and Long Le-Khac’s “A Quantitative Literary History of 2,958 Nineteenth-Century British Novels: The Semantic Cohort Method”, is now available on the website of the Literary Lab, http://litlab.stanford.edu.

In the course of their research, Heuser and Le-Khac designed a specific computational tool — “Correlator” — and a broader methodology — the “semantic cohort method” — that allowed them to approach cultural history in a completely new fashion, and the ambition and breadth of their attempt is reflected in the size of the pamphlet: a short book, that incorporates almost two years of work, and effectively combines methodological innovation and historical analysis.

The computational ingenuity and protracted research of “A Quantitative Literary History” mark an important turning point in how we conduct and present the work of the Lab. Other pamphlets of the same nature will follow in 2012 and 2013.

Franco Moretti

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Stanford Literary Lab Pamphlet 4:
http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet4.pdf

Stanford Literary Lab:
http://litlab.stanford.edu/