Macroanalysis vs. Close Reading

I am a crafting snob. There was a time in the not so distant past that I highly prized hand embroidery above all else. True, it took me several hours to complete even the smallest project, but I believed it was the struggle that added to the special-ness of the project, and anyone who would resort to using an embroidery machine was “cheating.” (That is, until I got an embroidery machine of my own, which I will discuss presently).

But what does all this have to do with Macroanalysis? While reading the beginning chapters of the book, I saw a parallel between my sewing by hand vs. machine and close reading vs. big data. I liked that Jockers made it clear there are places for both close reading and using big data for literary analysis. (I started to feel myself bristle at the idea of setting close reading aside for more computational methods). Continue reading “Macroanalysis vs. Close Reading”