Online Archive of University of Virginia Scholarship
The Word and the Bit: Information and 20th/21st Century Literature613 views
Author
Buysse, Jordan, English - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia
Advisors
Felski, Rita, English, University of Virginia
Pasanek, Brad , English, University of Virginia
Unsworth, John, English, University of Virginia
Abstract
  <i>The Word and the Bit</i> considers the aesthetics of information, and the information of aesthetics, in 20th and 21st century literature. By examining literary texts centered on the relationship between language and information, I argue for the importance of modes of reading that negotiate computational and instrumental uses of language--its transformation to and from ‘mere data’. In doing so, I deploy recent developments in computational methods for literary study--in particular text analysis--in order to reflect and interrogate a contemporary cultural shift towards the technologization of language.
   I move through a wide range of examples, from a pair of recent American novels, the late Modernist style of Gertrude Stein, to the constraint-based writing of the <i>Oulipo</i> and contemporary algorithmically generated writing. These varied texts are gathered together largely by their formal commitments rather than cultural context or ideological bent. I demonstrate how they exemplify literary forms that work between the technical discourse of information and code and the humanistic sense of the term as informing--developing and expanding the mind.
Buysse, Jordan. The Word and the Bit: Information and 20th/21st Century Literature. University of Virginia, English - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, PHD (Doctor of Philosophy), 2020-05-07, https://doi.org/10.18130/v3-vzr5-5j42.