The Word and the Bit: Information and 20th/21st Century Literature 618 views

&emsp;&emsp;<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. &emsp;&emsp; 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.

PHD (Doctor of Philosophy)

Literary Theory; Computational Literary Studies

English

2020-05-07