Metadata

Abstract

Chapter 5 of Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History demonstrates how computational approaches can be used to explore bibliographic and demographic metadata in order to reassess and postulate new claims about literary history. This chapter demonstrates how thoughtprovoking perspectives on literary periods and trends can be derived from a macroanalysis of book-level metadata – including book titles, author ethnicities, publication years, fictional settings, etc. Utilizing a database of metadata related to Irish-American literature, the author provides a reassessment of common narratives of Irish-American literary history and offers an alternative perspective on Charles Fanning’s theory of a “lost generation” of Irish-American writing. The metadata provide context for understanding Fanning’s reading of literary history and suggest that scholarly assumptions about Irish-American literary history might be based too much on a small sample of books by a homogenous group of authors. More broadly, the chapter argues that traditional literary scholars make a mistake in thinking that large-scale analyses are proposed as a replacement to close reading. On the contrary, a macroanalysis of metadata provides the necessary context for close readings and prompts new questions and new perspectives on literary history.