Reading literature through the looking glass of theory.
"Love's Nocturn," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Despite his fancy Italian name, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a full, 100% English poet and painter, who lived during the Victorian period. One of the first major projects in Digital Humanities was an...
Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
The Digital Humanities scholars Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs decided to do an experiment. In "Searching for the Victorians," Cohen talks about how they wanted to find out what kinds of books got publis...
"Leaves of Grass," by Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman wrote a lot. Not only did he write a boat load of poetry; he also kept revising his work and issuing it in new editions throughout his life. That's what he did with his most famous boo...
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Jane Austen is famous for giving us the very handsome Mr. Darcy. And Emma. And Elizabeth Bennet. All of those heroines and hot heroes in breeches. But she's also famous for something else: she was...
"'Dover Beach'—a Note to that Poem," by Archibald MacLeish
One thing that Digital Humanists—and especially Digital Humanists who focus on literature—like to do is look at the way that authors use certain vocabulary. Authors have a tendency to use certa...