Data Visualization in Enlightenment Literature and Culture

About the Book

Data Visualization in Enlightenment Literature and Culture explores the new interpretive possibilities offered by using data visualization in eighteenth-century studies. Such visualizations include tabulations, charts, k-means clustering, topic modeling, network graphs, data mapping, and/or other illustrations of patterns of social or intellectual exchange. The contributions to this collection present groundbreaking research of texts and/or cultural trends emerging from data mined from existing databases and other aggregates of sources. Describing both small and large digital projects by scholars in visual arts, history, musicology, and literary studies, this collection addresses the benefits and challenges of employing digital tools, as well as their potential use in the classroom.

Chapters 1, 3, 8 and 10 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Table of Contents:
Introduction, Ileana Baird.- PART I: Eighteenth-Century Precursors to Data Visualization.- Chapter One The Grid and the Visualization of Abstract Information: Three Eighteenth-Century Models, Jakub Zdebik, University of Ottawa.- PART II: Representing Big Data in Eighteenth-Century Studies.- Chapter Two In Search of Enlightenment: From Mapping Books to Cultural History, Simon Burrows, Western Sydney University.- Chapter Three Examining the Early Modern Canon: The English Short Title Catalogue and Large-Scale Patterns of Cultural Production, Mikko Tolonen, Ali Zeeshan Ijaz, Ville Vaara, Mark Hill, and Leo Lahti, Helsinki Computational History Group.- Chapter Four Eighteenth-Century Poetry Criticism from 32,000 feet: An Exploration of Macroanalysis and Data Visualization in Literary History, Billy Hall, Brigham Young University.- PART III: Case Studies.- Chapter Five Exploring Data Visualization: Time, Emotion, and Epistolarity in Frances Brooke’s The History of Emily Montague, Courtney A. Hoffman, Georgia Institute of Technology.- Chapter Six Outliers, Connectors, and Textual Periphery: John Dennis’s Social Network in The Dunciad in Four Books, Ileana Baird, Zayed University.- Chapter Seven Publishing Music by Subscription in Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Case of Charles Avison, Simon D. I. Fleming, University of Durham.- Afterword: Novel Knowledge, or Cleaning Dirty Data: Toward Open-Source Histories of the Novel, Emily Friedman, Auburn University.

About the Author :

Ileana Baird is Assistant Professor of English at Zayed University, UAE. She is the editor of Eighteenth-Century Social Networks: Clubs, Literary Salons, Textual Coteries (2014), and the co-editor of Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory in a Global Context: From Consumerism to Celebrity Culture (2014), and All Things Arabia: Arabian Identity and Material Culture (2020).

Review :
"Data Visualization in Enlightenment Literature and Culture is a fine volume that captures many of the modes of DH research underway in the eighteenth century. The volume benefits from copious images in both black and white and color to illustrate the visualizations described in the essays." (Mark Vareschi, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 56 (4), 2023)