How to Cite
License (Chapter)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Published
Spatial Analysis, or The New Literary Geography
Abstract The analysis of textual geography has occupied an important place in literary and cultural studies over several decades. This chapter anatomizes the three major forms of geo-textual analysis: thematic, deep, and schematic. It finds a place for each of these forms in the history of the Digital Humanities, and argues that the schematic form of analysis is the basis of a computationally intensive New Literary Geography. Presenting case-study results from large-scale research on ethnicity and national origin in British literature, on the historical evolution of American authors’ geographic attention, and on the relationship between literary and economic production, the chapter shows how a range of cultural issues can be addressed with the help of computationally produced textual-geographic evidence. It also suggests that the New Literary Geography both anticipates and precipitates concrete changes in the practice of literary scholarship – including convergence with other disciplines, increased attention to popular sources, and decreased linguistic diversity – that are now shaping the humanities as a whole.
Keywords Literary Geography, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, Scientific Culture