Experimental Criticism

Franco Moretti and Literature

Francesco de Cristofaro, Stefano Ercolino (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

288 Seiten

2026
Verso Books (Verlag)
9781804295076 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. Januar 2026)
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Experimental Criticism offers a series of close critical engagements with one of the world's most innovative literary thinkers. Franco Moretti, author of such major works as Signs Taken for Wonders, The Way of the World, Modern Epic, Atlas of the European Novel and The Bourgeois, may be best known for his 'distant reading' of vast numbers of literary texts at the Stanford Literary Lab. Francesco de Cristofaro and Stefano Ercolino lead a lively exploration of his work as a springboard for rethinking the fundamentals of literary studies.

Topics include literary theory and method, problems of scale and canonisation, the evolution of literary forms, abstract modelling and the digital humanities, comparative versus world literature, Marxism and literary history, and tragedy and the novel. There are essays from Moretti himself on Lukács and the tensions between close and distant reading, plus a 'provisional epilogue' in which he reflects on his intellectual itinerary and the challenges posed by contributors to this volume. 'Why study literature?' he asks. For the pleasure of reducing complex things to their simple elements; to bring them back to earth.

This key retrospective amounts to a critical manifesto for an experimental literary materialism, one unafraid to test radical new hypotheses.

Francesco de Cristofaro teaches comparative literature at the University of Naples Federico II. He is the author of Zoo di romanzi (Zoo of Novels), Letterature comparate (Comparative Literature) and La palla al balzo (Leaping at the Chance). Stefano Ercolino teaches literary theory and comparative literature at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. His books include The Maximalist Novel, The Novel-Essay and, with Massimo Fusillo, Negative Empathy in Literature and the Arts.

Criticism as Experiment
Francesco de Cristofaro and Stefano Ercolino

I Towards an Intellectual History

1. Unrestrained Individuation
Stefano Ercolino

2. Discourse on Method
Francesco de Cristoforo

3. The New Anatomy Table
Giuseppe Episcopo

II Experimental Criticism

4. Essayism: Franco Moretti
Guido Mazzoni

5. Morphology in America: Evolutionary Theory as an Experiment in Radical Sociology
Andrea Miconi

6. Towards a More Rational Literary History
Patricia McManus

7. Franco Moretti and the Sociology of Literature: Bridging Distant/Close Reading and Field Theory
Gisèle Sapiro

8. The Moon and the Tides: Franco Moretti as Theorist of Literature
Federico Bertoni

9. Serious Experiments
Mads Rosendahl Thomsen

10. Can the Digital Humanities Kill Their Own Theories?
Jérôme David

11. The Roads to Rome: Literary Studies, Hermeneutics, Quantification
Franco Moretti

III On the Novel

12. The Serious and the Tragic: Balzachian and Flaubertian Notes
Francesco Fiorentino

13. The Novel, History, Politics: Franco Moretti and the Nineteenth-Century European Novel
Françoise Lavocat

14. The Novel According to Franco Moretti
Enrica Villari

15. Useless Masterpiece: Notes on Lukács's Theory of the Novel
Franco Moretti

Time Passes
Franco Moretti

Bibliography

About the Authors

Erscheint lt. Verlag	27.1.2026
Co-Autor	Franco Moretti, Federico Bertoni
Übersetzer	Richard Braude
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 210 mm
Gewicht	267 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-13	9781804295076 / 9781804295076
Zustand	Neuware