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Digital Criticism and the Search for

Patterns

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William L. BenzonJuly 2014

Abstract: Literary critics seek patterns, whether patterns in individual texts or patterns in large

collections of texts. Valid patterns are taken as indices of causal mechanisms of one sort or

another. Most abstractly, a pattern emerges or is enacted as some machine makes its way in an

environment . An ecological niche is a pattern ÒtracedÓ by an organism in its environment.

Literary texts are themselves patterns traced by writers (and readers) through their life worlds.

Patterns are frequently described through visualizations. The concept of pattern thus dissolves the

apparent conflict between quantification and meaning, for quantification is but a means to

describing a pattern. It is up to the critic to determine whether or not a pattern is meaningful by

identifying the mechanism that produced the pattern. Examples from Shakespeare and Joseph

Conrad.

Introduction: Patterns and Descriptions ........................................................................................... 1

From Quantification to Patterns in Digital Criticism ....................................................................... 4

Rens Bod on Patterns........................................................................................................................ 8

Pattern: Ramsay on Shakespeare, and Beyond ................................................................................. 9

Epiphenomena? Ramsay on Patterns, Again .................................................................................. 16

ÒPatternÓ as a Term of Art .............................................................................................................. 18

Patterns as Epistemological Objects ............................................................................................... 20

Patterns and Literature .................................................................................................................... 25

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Introduction: Patterns and Descriptions

There is a sense, of course, in which IÕve been aware of and have been perceiving and thinkingabout patterns all my life. They are ubiquitous after all. But it wasnÕt until I began studying

cognitive science with the late David Hays that ÒpatternÓ became a term of art. Hays and his

students were developing a network model of cognitive structure Ð such models became common

in the 1970s. Such networks admit of two general kinds of computational process, path tracing

and pattern recognition. Path tracing is computationally easy, while the pattern recognition is not.

Human beings, however, are very good at perceiving and recognizing patterns.

What put the idea before me as something demanding specific thought, though, are

remarks Franco Moretti made in coming to grips with his work on the network analysis of plot

structure. In Network Theory, Plot Analysis (Literary Lab Pamphlet 2, 2011, p. 11) Moretti noted

that he Òdid not need network theory; but I probably needed networks.... What I took from

network theory were less concepts than visualization.Ó We then examine the visualizations to

determine whether or not they indicate patterns that are worth further exploration.That, it seems to me, should put to rest fears about the incommensurability of numbers

and meaning or, even worse, anxiety about infecting humanistic inquiry with quantitative evil.

ItÕs not about numbers and counting. ItÕs about patterns. Numerical work is subordinate to and in

service of looking for patterns, whether patterns in individual texts, as Moretti was doing in his

work on plot structures, or patterns in collections of hundreds and thousands of texts spanning

decades or more of historical time.

But, just what IS a pattern anyhow? How do we tell the difference between patterns and,

well, non-patterns? Those are tricky questions, questions I pursue in the posts that make up this

working paper. If what weÕre looking for is some a priori way of specifying what patterns are so

that we can then theorize about patterns in a general way, then I think weÕre in trouble. In the

sections, ÒPatternÓ as a Term of Art and Patterns as Epistemological Objects, I suggest that there

is no such thing. What emerges from those discussions is something like this: A pattern issomething that emerges or is enacted as some machine makes its way in an environment in which

it either survives or fails Ð where the italicized terms are understood in a very general and abstract

sense. Thus understood, patterns are relations between machines and environments.

The level of abstraction and generalization I have in mind is that which is typical of

theoretical computer science, a set of disciplines in which I am by no means expert. Nonetheless I

will hazard a few remarks. Consider the opening of the WikipediaÕs entry on computational

complexity:

Computational complexity theory is a branch of the theory of computation in

theoretical computer science and mathematics that focuses on classifying

computational problems according to their inherent difficulty, and relating those

classes to each other. A computational problem is understood to be a task that is

in principle amenable to being solved by a computer, which is equivalent tostating that the problem may be solved by mechanical application of

mathematical steps, such as an algorithm.

A problem is regarded as inherently difficult if its solution requires significant

resources, whatever the algorithm used. The theory formalizes this intuition, by

introducing mathematical models of computation to study these problems and

quantifying the amount of resources needed to solve them, such as time and

storage. Other complexity measures are also used, such as the amount of



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communication (used in communication complexity), the number of gates in a

circuit (used in circuit complexity) and the number of processors (used in parallel

computing).1

It is the second paragraph we need to think about, for it is about resources. Pattern recognition

isnÕt the only kind of problem that is computationally difficult, but it is one of them. And, of

course, not all computational operations are particularly demanding.My thought then, is this, if patterns are computationally difficult, and computational

difficulty is about resources Ð time, storage, communication lines, processors Ð then patterns are

things that exist for, are defined by, computers Ð abstractly understood in the most general case,

but by actual computational devices in some specific cases. No wonder thinking about them is

difficult!

Now, in digital criticism, pattern recognition is being done by the critics, not by the

computer. Computing of the Òbig dataÓ kind requires a fair bit of computational horsepower, but

much of it is well within in the range available in current laptop machines. The number crunching

is not, in fact, computationally complex. ItÕs relatively straightforward but simply requires a lot of

CPU cycles and a fair amount of storage to keep track of the data and of intermediate results.

Pattern recognition, on the other hand, typically leads to what is called combinatorial explosion in

which intermediate results multiply as the computation proceeds and there is no guarantee that, atsome point, the intermediate results will become ÒabsorbedÓ into the ongoing work and finally

disappear, leaving you with a sure result Ð either a recognized pattern, or the certainty that no

pattern is there. People do that kind of thing relatively well Ð lots of resources in the form of

processors, where each neuron in the nervous system is considered to be a processor, giving us

100 billion processors.

So, while patterns are what digital criticism is about, the computers arenÕt being used to

recognize the patterns. TheyÕre being used to create the information displays, the visualizations,

in which we recognize patterns. I note as well that this is true whether one is looking for patterns

in individual texts or in large collections of texts.

And, I warrant it is true even if you arenÕt using computers at all. IÕve been writing a

great deal about ring-composition over the past few years, but IÕve not been using computers to

help me identify ring-forms Ð except in the trivial sense that I using word-processing softwareand I make tables and charts to help in the search. What I end up with are descriptions, another

frequent blogging topic.2

A description is a description, whether it is created by hand or with computer aids. The

visualizations so common in digital criticism are descriptive in kind. And so, I believe, we need

to think explicitly about description: How do we formulate descriptions? What are the roles of

verbal description, visualization, and even mathematical and logical formalism?

What are we describing? Patterns, or at any rate, possible patterns. Whether those

patterns are real or not, that is, whether or not they indicate some causal process at work in the

world, thatÕs something we have to determine. Just how we do that, well...weÕve got new

disciplines to create, do we not?

! ! ! ! !

This working paper consists of the following posts from New Savanna:

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory2 IÕve used the tag ÒdescriptionÓ to label these posts. Click on it in the tag cloud at New Savanna

(in the right-hand column) and youÕll get all the posts about description.



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From Quantification to Patterns in Digital Criticism: Here I take up the general question of

computation and quantification as set forth by several investigators and assert that patterns is

what weÕre seeking through the use of computers, not numbers.

Rens Bod on Patterns: This is an abstract of a paper Bod gave on patterns, with the link to the

paper.

Pattern: Ramsay on Shakespeare, and Beyond: In which I examine an essay in which Ramsay

uses network diagrams to describe patterns of scene locations in Shakespeare plays and in which

he wonders: What are these patterns good for?

Epiphenomena? Ramsay on Patterns, Again: I look at a more recent Ramsay piece in which he

again foregrounds the notion of pattern, suggesting that they are Òemergent textual

epiphenomenalÓ. Emergent, perhaps. Epiphenomenal, no. ÒTheyÕre the main event.Ó

ÒPatternÓ as a Term of Art: This is where I introduce the idea of a pattern as a relationship

between a machine and its environment. I draw this conclusion by thinking about the ecological

niche, where the machine is an organism and its environment is its life world. To this I have

appended the abstract for an article David Hays and I wrote on evolution and complexity.

Patterns as Epistemological Objects: Now I develop that idea, this time using examples from

human cognition and reasoning. As a specific example I consider paragraph length in ConradÕs

Heart of Darkness, which exhibits a remarkable pattern. But is it real?

Patterns and Literature: Literature itself is a means of tracing patterns through the world.

Hermeneutical methodologies attempt to explicate the patterns that given texts trace in the world;

the more sophisticated methodologies grapple with the fact that those texts, after all, exist in the

world and so are components of the paths they trace. The naturalist critic, however, Òtakes a step

backÓ from the text and concentrates on describing the formal patterns in the text itself, the

patterns through which the text imposes itself on life.

! ! ! ! !

Let me suggest, finally, that as I have, following others, recently sketched out an ontology based

on objects,3 I am now approaching an epistemology based on patterns. Pattern-oriented

epistemology anyone?

3 Living with Abundance in a Pluralist Cosmos: Some Metaphysical Sketches,

http://ssrn.com/abstract=2197108



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From Quantification to Patterns in Digital Criticism

I would like to continue the examination of fundamental presuppositions, conceptual matrices,which I began in The Fate of Reading and Theory.4 That post was concerned with how, in the

context of academic literary criticism, 1) ÒreadingÓ elides the distinction between (merely)

reading some text Ð for enjoyment, edification, whatever Ð and writing up an interpretation of that

text and 2) how Òliterary theoryÓ became the use of theory in interpreting literary texts. This post

is about the common sense association between computers and computing on the one hand and

numbers and mathematics on the other. I conclude by suggesting that numbers are subordinate to

pattern, that it is patterns that are the object of literary computing.

* * * * *

LetÕs start with a couple of sentences from one of the pamphlets published by StanfordÕs Literary

Lab, Ryan Heuser and Long Le-Khac, A Quantitative Literary History of 2,958 Nineteenth-Century British Novels: The Semantic Cohort Method (May 2012, 68 page PDF)5:

The general methodological problem of the digital humanities can be bluntly

stated: How do we get from numbers to meaning? The objects being tracked, the

evidence collected, the ways theyÕre analyzedÑall of these are quantitative. How

to move from this kind of evidence and object to qualitative arguments and

insights about humanistic subjectsÑculture, literature, art, etc.Ñis not clear.

There we have it, numbers on the one hand and meaning on the other. ItÕs presented is a gulf

which the digital humanities must somehow cross.

When I first read that pamphlet most likely I thought nothing of that statement. It states,

after all, a commonplace notion. But when I read those words in the context of writing a post6

about Alan LiuÕs essay, ÒThe Meaning of the Digital HumanitiesÓ (PMLA 128, 2013, 409-423) Icame up short. ÒThatÕs not quite right,Ó I said to myself, itÕs wrong to so casually identify

computers and computing with numbers.Ó

* * * * *

Now letÕs take a look at an essay by Kari Krauss, Conjectural Criticism: Computing Past and

Future Texts ( DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2009, Volume 3 Number 4).7 HereÕs her

opening paragraph:

In an essay published in the Blackwell Companion to Digital Literary Studies,

Stephen Ramsay argues that efforts to legitimate humanities computing within

the larger discipline of literature have met with resistance because well-meaningadvocates have tried too hard to brand their work as "scientific," a word whose

positivistic associations conflict with traditional humanistic values of ambiguity,

4 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-fate-of-reading-and-theory.html5 http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet4.pdf6 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/03/computer-as-symbol-and-model-on-reading.html 7 http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/4/000069/000069.html#



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open-endedness, and indeterminacy [Ramsay 2007]. If, as Ramsay notes, the

computer is perceived primarily as an instrument for quantizing, verifying,

counting, and measuring, then what purpose does it serve in those disciplines

committed to a view of knowledge that admits of no incorrigible truth somehow

insulated from subjective interpretation and imaginative intervention [Ramsay

2007, 479Ð482]?

Though IÕve got reservations about RamsayÕs proposals (see A Hothouse Manifesto: Does

Stephen Ramsay Sell Literary Criticism Short?8) I certainly have no problem with dissolving the

bond that common sense has forged between the idea of the computer and those of numbers and

math. Later on Krauss notes:

The essay develops a computational model of textuality, one that better supports

conjectural reasoning, as a counterweight to the material model of textuality that

now predominates. Computation is here broadly understood to mean the

systematic manipulation of discrete units of information, which, in the case of

language, entails the grammatical processing of strings[4] rather than the

mathematical calculation of numbers to create puns, anagrams, word ladders, and

other word games. The essay thus proposes that a textual scholar endeavoring to

recover a prior version of a text, a diviner attempting to decipher an oracle bysigns, and a poet exploiting the combinatorial play of language collectively draw

on the same library of semiotic operations, which are amenable to algorithmic

expression and simulation.

Here Krauss explicitly asserts that computers can operate on strings of linguistic characters as

well as on numbers.

Her corrective, however, isnÕt forceful enough. When Alan Turing formalized the

concept of computation as the operation of an abstract machine Ð we now talk of Turing machines

Ð he talked of that machine as reading symbols from and writing them to a paper tape according

to a set of rules. He didnÕt specify what those symbols meant or how, if at all, they were related to

objects and events in the external world. His conception was very abstract and general: the

machine processed symbols. ThatÕs it.

Historically, the task of translating from one natural language to another is one of the

problems on which the modern disciplines of computer science and engineering were founded.

Research on machine translation began in the 1950s almost as soon as there were digital

computers with the requisite capacity. That task is not about number crunching. It begins and

ends in language.

* * * * *

LetÕs conclude with Franco Moretti, Network Theory, Plot Analysis (2011).9 I want to look at a

long passage at the end where he starts out talking about quantification and ends up somewhere

else (p. 11):

The idea behind this study, clearly stated in its opening page, was, very simply,

that network theory could offer a way to quantify plot, thus providing an essential

piece that was still missing from computational analyses of literature. Once I

started working in earnest, though, I soon realized that the machine-gathering of

the data, essential to large-scale quantification, was not yet a realistic

8 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-hothouse-manifesto-does-stephen.html9 http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet2.pdf



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possibility...So, from its very first section, the essay drifted from quantification to

the qualitative analysis of plot: the advantage of thinking in terms of space rather

than time; its segmentation into regions, instead of episodes; the new, non-

anthropomorphic idea of the protagonist; or, even, the ÒundoingÓ of narrative

structures occasioned by the removal of specific vertices in the network.

Looking back at the work done, I wouldnÕt call this change of direction amistake: after all, network theory does help us redefine some key aspects of the

theory of plot, which is an important aspect of literary study. This is not the

theoryÕs original aim, of course, but then again, a change of purpose Ð a

ÒrefunctionalizationÓ, as the Russian Formalists called it Ð is often what happens

to a system of thought traveling from one discipline to another....

No, I did not need network theory; but I probably needed networks.... What I

took from network theory were less concepts than visualization: the possibility of

extracting characters and interactions from a dramatic structure, and turning them

into a set of signs that I could see at a glance, in a two-dimensional space.

Moretti started with quantification and ended with visualization, and visualization is ubiquitous in

the analytical work of digital humanists. ItÕs necessary to get conceptual purchase on the data.

HereÕs a pair of visualizations from MorettiÕs most recent pamphlet, ÒOperationalizingÓ:

or, the Function of Measurement in Modern Literary Theory (December 2013, p. 7).10

The top visualization is an ordinary bar chart. The length of a bar is proportional to the size of a

characterÕs Òword-spaceÓ in Antigone. While one could express this information verbally Ð Creon

spoke 28.7% of the words; the chorus has 19.8%, etc. Ð thatÕs not a very good way of presenting

the information.

10 http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet6.pdf



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The bottom visualization is even more resistant to verbal formulation. Sure, you could do

it, but the pile of words would be big and it would be all but impossible to get the synoptic view

you have in a single glance at the graph Ð as mathematicians call such network objects. The nodes

in the graph represent characters in Antigone, the same characters as in the bar chart, while the

links (also called edges or arcs) indicate relationship between the characters. The older pamphlet

had over 50 such diagrams, though without the arrows and variable line weight. ItÕs those

diagrams that Moretti discovered on the way to quantification.What are those diagrams about? Let me suggest that they are about patterns. Yes, I know,

the word is absurdly general, but hear me out.

That bar chart depicts a pattern of quantitative relationships, and does so better and more

usefully than a bunch of verbal statements. You look at it and see the pattern.

The pattern in the network diagram is harder to characterize. ItÕs a pattern of relationship

among characters. What kind of relationships? Dramatic relationships? That, I admit, is weak.

But if you read MorettiÕs pamphlet, youÕll see whatÕs going on.

The important point is what happens when you get such diagrams based on a bunch of

different texts. You can see, at a glance, that there are different patterns in different texts. While

each such diagram represents the reduction of a text to a model, the patterns in themselves are

irreducible. They are a primary object of description and analysis.

And that is my point: patterns.As far as I know Moretti did not use a computer to discover those network patterns. He

used a computer to draw them, given human input, but he didnÕt feed texts into a computer and it

then ÒreadÓ them and compiled the diagrams automatically. Moretti read the texts, identified the

characters, and drew the diagrams by hand, which were then redrawn using computer tools.

It seems to me that the automatic generation of such diagrams from textual input may be

within the capacity of current computing technology, but thatÕs beside the point. Those diagrams

are very much in the spirit, if you will, of computing.

* * * * *

You might want to look at these posts:

Computing = Math, NOT

http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/01/computing-math-not.html

Of Lists and Litanies

http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/06/of-lists-and-litanies.html

The first dispels the notion that computing is equivalent to numerical calculation while the second

is about, at least in part, certain kinds of objects, lists, that are subject to computational

manipulation.



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Rens Bod on Patterns

WHO'S AFRAID OF PATTERNS?: THE PARTICULAR VERSUS THE UNIVERSAL ANDTHE MEANING OF HUMANITIES 3.0. BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review. Vol. 128,

No. 4, 2013, 171-180.11

Rens Bod

RN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-110030

Abstract:

The advent of Digital Humanities has enabled scholars to identify previously

unknown patterns in the arts and letters; but the notion of pattern has also been

subject to debate. In my response to the authors of this Forum, I argue that

ÔpatternÕ should not be confused with universal pattern. The term pattern itself isneutral with respect to being either particular or universal. Yet the testing and

discovery of patterns Ð be they local or global Ð is greatly aided by digital tools.

While such tools have been beneficial for the humanities, numerous scholars lack

a sufficient grasp of the underlying assumptions and methods of these tools. I

argue that in order to criticise and interpret the results of digital humanities

properly, scholars must acquire a good working knowledge of the underlying

tools and methods. Only then can digital humanities be fully integrated

(humanities 3.0) with time-honoured (humanities 1.0) tools of hermeneutics and

criticism.

What I'm wondering is whether or not pattern is emerging as a fundamental

epistemological/ontological entity. I've broached this idea in an earlier post focused on Moretti,From Quantification to Patterns in Digital Criticism.

As I already said, the idea of patterns is very general. But that doesnÕt make it useless. On

the contrary, that generality makes the idea useful and powerful. As I noted in the introduction, It

is a commonplace in the cognitive science that the human mind (and brain) is very good at pattern

recognition. But digital computers are not so good at it. I note also that the notion of design

patterns has been popular in computer programming,12 which got it from the notion of pattern

language13 articulated by the architect, Christopher Alexander.14

11 http://www.bmgn-lchr.nl/index.php/bmgn/article/view/RN%3ANBN%3ANL%3AUI%3A10-1-

110030 12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern

13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_language

14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander



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Pattern: Ramsay on Shakespeare, and Beyond

I was looking though the syllabus for one of Alan LiuÕs courses, Literature + (New Media &Literary Interpretation: Close, Distant, and Other Reading)15 and came across an older (2005), and

fascinating, paper by Stephen Ramsay, In Praise of Patterns, TEXT Technology, Number 2, 2005,

pp. 177-19016 (with accompanying figures17). ItÕs an interesting piece of work, both for what it

says about Shakespeare and for what it says about methodology.

Methodologically, Ramsay tells us he began playing around with network diagrams of

Shakespeare plays because, well, he was interested in such diagrams and wanted to see what

would show up. After a fair amount of work, including a presentation to some mathematicians

and collaboration with some data miners, something very interesting showed up. But, alas,

Ramsay doesnÕt know quite what to make of those diagrams and yet, despite the mystery, they

remain intellectually compelling.

And thatÕs just fine. ThatÕs the kind of world weÕre in. We have the capacity to find

interesting things, but once found, explaining them is a problem. If we canÕt figure out how tooperate in that world Ð this is me speaking now Ð weÕre not going to get very far with digital

humanities. Whatever digital humanities is, it is not a positivistic haven of certain knowledge

(IÕve now returned to Ramsay).

This post is going to be a long one, over 2K words. First I present RamsayÕs work, then I

present some work I did on Shakespeare some time ago, work that speaks to genre by looking at a

comedy ( Much Ado About Nothing), a tragedy (Othello), and a romance (The WinterÕs Tale). I

conclude by suggesting that weÕve left the world defined by existing methods of hermeneutic

analysis and exegesis.

Patterns of Loci and Scenes

Ramsay looked at how ShakespeareÕs plays moved from place to place as they moved from one

scene to the next. HereÕs the graph he produced for The Comedy of Errors:

15 http://english236s2012.pbworks.com/w/page/49237967/Schedule

16 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishfacpubs/57/

17 http://texttechnology.humanities.mcmaster.ca/ramsay_figures/



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By standard mathematical convention such a diagram is called a graph; the ovals are called nodes

and the arrows are called edges or arcs. Each node in one of RamsayÕs diagrams indicates a locus

(my term) where a scene takes place and is labeled with a name or phrase designating that place.

The edges indicate the transition from one scene to the following scene; the label on the edge

indicates the following scene. It follows from the labeling convention that there will not be any

edge labeled Ò1.1Ó as that is the first scene in any play and, as such, does not follow any other

scene.

At the top of this diagram we see a locus called ÒA hall in Duke SolinusÕs place.Ó It has

one edge coming from it and directed to a locus called ÒThe Mart.Ó That edge is labeled Ò1.2.Ó

We now know that the first scene of the first act must take place in that hall in the palace. Byfollowing the edges in act-scene order from node to node we can trace the course of the play

through space (the loci) and time (act-scene order).

Notice the locus at the lower right, ÒA street before a Priory.Ó As there is no edge

pointing from it, it must be the locus of the last scene in the play. To the upper left of that locus

we see a locus designated ÒBefore the house of Antipholus of Ephesus.Ó At the right side of that

node edge 3.2 loops back to the same node, indicating that two successive scenes (3.1 and 3.2)

are set at that locus. In the middle of the diagram we can see that a number of scenes shift back

and forth among loci. Those are the kinds of features that attracted RamsayÕs interest.

It turns out the graphs for the various plays look markedly different.18 The graph for

Julius Caesar, for example, is very linear, while that for King Lear is linear for a while and then

becomes more richly structured. Antony and Cleopatra is still more richly structured.

The question that Ramsay then asked is this: Are the graphs for the four traditional types Ð comedy, history, tragedy, and romance Ð much alike within the genre but different from those

of other genres? It turns out that they are, though Ramsay did not determine this by visual

18 http://texttechnology.humanities.mcmaster.ca/ramsay_figures/

IÕve appended these graphs to this section. They are, alas, rather small, but the overall shape is

obvious. Still, you might want a closer look at them. Therefore IÕve also given links to the

diagrams on the web.



11

inspection. First he characterized each play in terms of features of its associated locus-scene

graph (p. 186):

1) the number of distinct loci,

2) the total number of scenes,

3) the number of Òsingle-instanceÓ scenes (I assume this means loci with only

one scene),4) the number of loops, where successive scenes occur at the same locus, and

5) the number of switches, where a string of scenes alternates between some one

locus and one or more other loci.

With the help of Bei Yu, a graduate student at the University of Illinois who worked with the

National Center for Supercomputing Applications, he used Baysian methods to classify the

patterns of ShakespeareÕs plays as indicated by the above five features.

It took a bit of work to figure out how to conduct the analysis, but they came up with

something that worked (p. 188):The comedies are, for the most part, clustering together, and the tragedies are, for the

most part, clustering together. There are several curious anomalies, but the clear cases

seem to have been adjudicated properly. Moreover, the curious anomalies appear to

conform to some of the more famous critical statements about the plays. For example,one very inßuential critic has argued that both Othello and Romeo and Juliet resemble

comedy, without making any mention of Òlow-levelÓ structural features (such as scene

loops and switches).

The remarkable thing is that this classification scheme worked at all. ItÕs not at all perfect, but itÕs

good enough that we have some serious thinking to do. Why should such simple and apparently

purely formal features turn out to be reasonable indicators of genre, at least within ShakespeareÕs

corpus?

I donÕt know, though IÕll have something to say in that direction in the next section of this

post, and neither does Ramsay. But, for my money, he evades the issue, or rather, he doesnÕt

seem to know how to face it squarely.

HereÕs the paragraph that follows the previously quoted passage:One is temptedÑalmost behoovedÑto make sense of the entire arrangement. Indeed, we

might almost convince ourselves that such matters as Ònumber of scenesÓ and Ònumber orloopsÓ prove something essential about ShakespeareÕs genres. But this, of course, is

nonsense. These methods and visualizations prove nothing at all. Indeed, to assert that

these extremely low-level features are somehow constitutive of genre would be to

perpetrate a ham-fisted abuse of statistics and a grotesque parody of scientiÞc method

simultaneously. But what, then, does all of this do?

HereÕs what bothers me: But this, of course, is nonsense. These methods and visualizations

prove nothing at all. That denial is too strong, and in misleading terms. ItÕs not a matter of

proving anything or of being Òconstitutive of genre.Ó Ramsay comes closer to the mark at the end

of the next paragraph:It forces us to move our eyes over ShakespeareÕs plays as EulerÕs eye must once have

moved over the bridges of Kšnigsberg. I have never thought (at least in structural terms)

of the ways in which The Tempest resembles comedy, the ways that AllÕs Well that Ends

Well (one of the infamous Òproblem comediesÓ) resembles (of all things) history, or the

ways in which Henry V resembles tragedy. The fact that IÕm being led in such directions

by low-level structural featuresÑsome of which barely register in oneÕs consciousness

during the ordinary act of readingÑraises an obvious question: How do the low-level

matters of dramaturgy relate to the high-level matters of genre?

ThatÕs the question we must ask ourselves. Ramsay has a bit more to say in this article, but he

doesnÕt propose an answer to that question. I donÕt have an answer either, but I have done some

work on Shakespeare that overlaps with some of RamsayÕs passing observations.



12

More Shakespearean Patterns, of a Different Kind RamsayÕs graphs, and the five features he derives from them, are descriptions. One of the things

Ramsay has gotten from those graphs is the realization that this or that play, which is normally

classified as X, is also rather like Y. So, Othello is like a comedy, Henry V is like a tragedy, and

so forth (and he lists more examples in the article than IÕve quoted above). At several points in his

Anatomy of Criticism Northrup Frye has observed that, in effect, a tragedy is a comedy where the

last sequence (of three sequences), the reconciliation, has gone missing (see my post Frye on

Comedy and Tragedy).19 That is to say, and to put it crudely, there is a Òdeep playÓ that is

expressed variously as a comedy or a tragedy or a history, whatever, depending on

Òcircumstances.Ó That is, depending on those circumstances, the deep play will require either this

or that pattern of locations and scenes to get from the opening state to the final state.

What are these deep plays and what are the circumstances that allow/force them to be

expressed in one form or another?

Before we get to that, however, I want to note first of all, that in the comedies there is

typically a physical setting or settings where a comedyÕs middle sequence takes place, e.g. the

forest of Arden. Thus the loci where scenes are set are thematically active. For the comedies,

then, one would like to know how these loci are positioned RamsayÕs locus-scene graphs.

Returning to the larger issue, that of ShakespeareÕs Òdeep plays,Ó It turns out that

Shakespeare has undertaken a Ònatural experimentÓ that affords us some clues on this, one IÕve

examined in At the Edge of the Modern, or Why is Prospero ShakespeareÕs Greatest Creation? 20

( Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 21(3): 259-279, 1998). In each of Much Ado About

Nothing, a comedy, Othello, a tragedy, and The Winter's Tale, a romance, we find a protagonist

who mistakenly believes the woman he loves to be unfaithfulÑin Much Ado IÕm talking about

Claudio-Hero plot. In the comedy the male protagonist makes the mistake during courtship; in the

tragedy the mistake happens shortly after marriage; and in the romance, the mistake occurs well

into the marriage. If we examine the relationships between the characters, we find that it gets

closer as we move from one play to the next. And that's not all. There seem to be systematic

differences among the configuration of characters in these plays. And that has led me to wonder

whether or not those differences are related to the fact that we are dealing with three different

genres, comedy, tragedy, and romance. Are these configurations merely incidental features of the

plays or are they intrinsic to the different genres?

With this in mind, consider the following table, in which the first column names the

function a given character takes in the play:

Much Ado Othello Winter's Tale

Protagonist Claudio Othello Leontes

Mentor Don Pedro

Deceiver Don John Iago

Paramour Borachio Cassio Polixenes

Beloved Hero Desdemona Hermione

Does this table depict something for which an explanation is necessary or does it depict a merely

contingent set of relationships between these plays? If an explanation is necessary, what kind?

What that table suggests to me is that we have three different ways of ÒmappingÓ a single

mindÑShakespeareÕs, the readerÕs, whateverÐonto the multiple characters of a play. Claudio,

Othello, and Leontes each has different capabilities; and so they draw on different capabilities

within the reader.

19 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/12/frye-on-comedy-and-tragedy.html

20 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1507240



13

Neither Othello nor Leontes has a mentor comparable to Claudio's Don Pedro. Don Pedro

talked with Hero's father, Leonato, and arranged the marriage. We see that happen in the play.

We must infer that Othello arranged his marriage to Desdemona, whose father didn't even know

about the marriage. We know nothing about how Leontes managed his marriage to Hermione, but

he doesn't have anyone associated with him who could be called his mentor.

Further, there is no deceiver in The Winter's Tale comparable to Don John or Iago.

Leontes deceives himself. Iago, Othello's deceiver, is closer to Othello than Don John is toClaudio. Among the presumed paramours, Cassio is closer to Othello than Borachio is to Claudio.

Polixenes and Leontes have known one another since boyhood; they are so closely identified that

we can consider them doubles. Thus relationships between key characters and the protagonist

become more intimate as we move from the comedy to the tragedy to the romanceÑand some

characters, mentor and deceiver, seem to disappear.

Note also that the protagonist becomes more powerful as we move through the sequence

of plays. Claudio is a youth just beginning to make his way in the world. Othello is a mature man,

a seasoned general at the height of his career; but there are men who have authority over him.

Leontes is king (and father); there is no mundane authority higher than his. Perhaps this increase

in power is correlated with the apparent ÒabsorptionÓ of functions into the protagonist. The

absorption of functions increases the behavioral range of the protagonist. And this increased

range is symbolized by higher social status.Finally, notice that as we move from the comedy, to the tragedy, to the romance, the

deception moves further into a marriage sequence that begins with falling in love, moves to

betrothal, then to the marriage ceremony, the subsequent consummation, and finally to settled

married life. In the comedy the deception falls between the betrothal and the ceremony. It is

between the ceremony and the consummation in the tragedy while it happens well into married

life in the romance.

What have we got so far?

That table depicts a pattern, but one defined over relationships among plays rather than a

pattern confined to a single playÐa mode of analysis inspired by LŽvi-StraussÕs work on myth.

IÕve justified giving that pattern particular attention by the fact that the characters in each of the

plays are involved in the same situationÐa man is deceived about the actions of his beloved.

Given how that common situation aligns the characters, other terms of comparison emerge:capabilities, position in the social system, and ÒdistanceÓ into the marriage sequence.

All these things seem bound together, but I still donÕt see a causal model emerging from

this pattern. ItÕs just a description, albeit an interesting one.

In that Franco Moretti has been interested in configurations of characters in a variety of

texts, including ShakespeareÕs plays, we can think of this pattern as existing in or at least being in

touch with the territory heÕs been investigating with his graphs (in the second pamphlet from the

Literary Lab Network Theory, Plot Analysis, 2011).21 This pattern thus establishes some kind of

oblique connection between MorettiÕs graphs and RamsayÕs giving us three related sets of

patterns.

But WhereÕs an Explanation?

But how do we get an explanatory account out of these patterns? I donÕt know. In my

Shakespeare article (At the Edge of the Modern) I introduce quite a bit of psychology to deal with

the deception plot: some psychoanalysis, some of what is now called evolutionary psychology

(the term hadnÕt been coined when I drafted the article), and some work on maturation during the

life cycle. But it still doesnÕt add up to a causal model for ShakespeareÕs deployment of genre.

21 http://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet2.pdf



14

What it is, is speculation, albeit interesting and suggestive speculation. Nor do I see much

hope of arriving at some kind of casual explanation without more speculation and more fishing

expeditions in search of suggestive patterns.

Given what IÕve said about Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, and The WinterÕs Tale,

one obvious next step would be to examine RamsayÕs graphs for those three plays (which arenÕt

among the figures for his article) and see what turns up. Think of it as a fishing expedition of

narrow scope. ThereÕs no specific agenda, weÕre not looking for anything in particular, but whoknows, something interesting might show upÐthough we might have to do more than simply look

for loops and count loci. WeÕll probably want to look at what happens in each scene, and THATÕs

likely to be a messy job.

Assume that something interesting does show up. What then? ThatÕs only three plays out

of over thirty. How do we extend those results to the rest of ShakespeareÕs oeuvre?

The only thing IÕm fairly sure about is that weÕre not going to solve these problems by

looking for models within the existing repertoire of hermeneutic strategies, for none of them were

created to solve these kinds of problem. These arenÕt hermeneutic problems. They arenÕt about

what the plays mean, theyÕre about the mechanisms and processes whereby they are constructed.

Is the profession ready to address such questions?

Appendix: Three Plays, Three Patterns

Julius Caesar:

http://texttechnology.humanities.mcmaster.ca/ramsay_figures/plate_10.jpg



15

King Lear:


Anthony and Cleopatra:




16

Epiphenomena? Ramsay on Patterns, Again

About a month ago I posted on RamsayÕs article about patterns in the scene structure of

ShakespeareÕs plays. Now IÕm looking at a more recent piece, The Meandering throughTextuality Challenge,22 from a 2011 MLA panel, ÒDigging into Data.Ó Patterns come up again:

I have many times suggested ÒpatternÓ as the treasure sought by humanistic inquiry:

which is to say, an order, a regularity, a connection, a resonance. I continue to insist that

this is, in the end, what humanists in general, and literary critics in particular, are always

looking for, whether theyÕre new critics, new historicists, new atheists, new faculty, or

New Englanders...

This would be a banal observation ... were it not for the fact that (like these worn phrases,

once upon a time) it encourages us see a connection that might otherwise be obscured.

For if humanistic inquiry is about pattern, then it isnÕt completely crazy to suggest that

computers might be useful tools for humanistic inquiry. Because long before computation

is about YouTube or Twitter or Google, it is about pattern transduction.

So far so good. I especially like that last bit, that computation is about pattern transduction. IÕmnot entirely sure what that means, nor am I at all disturbed by that. Whatever it means, it draws

the readerÕs attention away calculation and number, which is a good thing.

Ramsay goes on to say:

... we do not present the task of literary criticism or historiography as the process of

finding some intact, but buried object beneath the surface. ThatÕs because we have for a

very long time now conceived of the patterns weÕre looking for not as Òout there,Ó but as

Òin hereÓ Ñ not as preexisting ontological formations, but as emergent textual

epiphenomena.

Again IÕm not so sure, but I want to think about this uncertainty, just a bit.

When I go looking for patterns in texts as far as I can tell IÕm looking for something

thatÕs Òout thereÓ in the sense that I am not, as a critic, projecting that pattern onto the text. Ring-composition really is there, whether in the Japanese film Gojira,23 or in Heart of Darkness,24 or

elsewhere (Coleridge, Tezuka, Coppola)25. Now I understand that those texts, considered as

inscriptions on some surface (whether ink on a page, emulsion on celluloid, or a pattern of light

on some surface) must be ÒreadÓ by a mind in order for the phenomenon to be fully manifest, but

that certainly doesnÕt make them epiphenomenal.

Textual patterns are not side-effects (Òemergent textual epiphenomenaÓ). TheyÕre the

main event. They are as real (Òpreexisting ontological formationsÓ?) as the ink splotches or pixels

that constitute them. That is, they are real if WE are. If, weÕre not real, thenÉ

Perhaps thatÕs what one gets from using computation as a model for mental process, a

way of thinking about ÒtextsÓ as a thinkable unity of sign and process (cf. the post, Texts, Traces,

and Hyperobjects26). As long as and to the extent that digital critics confine their computational

thinking to matters of Òback office supportÓ for the ÒrealÓ work of reading theyÕre stuck with theexisting roster of hermeneutic systems and their attendant mysteries and mystifications.

22 http://stephenramsay.us/text/2011/01/06/the-meandering-through-textuality-challenge/

23 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/12/ring-form-opportunity-no-4-gojira-is.html

24 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/07/heart-of-heart-of-darkness.html

25 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/12/center-point-construction-coleridge.html

26 http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/03/texts-traces-and-hyperobjects.html



17

Ramsay ends his piece by suggesting that digital criticism Òmight be more revolutionary than

anything that has happened in literary study in fifty years.Ó But that revolution will be still-born

unless Ramsay and his colleagues can come up with some way to think of textual patterns as

something more substantial than Òemergent textual epiphenomena.Ó If they donÕt want to think of

the mind as, in some sense, computational in kind, well then, give me another conceptualization.

But somehow weÕve got to get across the barrier that critics cobbled together27 betweenhermeneutics on the one hand and linguistics, cognition, and neuroscience.

Downing that barrier does not mean we get to enter a happy land of positivist truth.

Nothing of the kind. As far as I can tell, it means, among other things, that we must devote

enormous effort to cobbling together descriptions of textual phenomena (ÒpatternsÓ) without the

immediate prospect of explaining them. We need the descriptions so that we know what it is

weÕre trying to explain.

27 The Critic's Will to Meaning over the Resistance of the Text, http://new-

savanna.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-critics-will-to-meaning-over.html



18

ÒPatternÓ as a Term of Art

In continuing to think about pattern I remembered some old notes IÕd made about the concept of abiological niche. IÕd decided that a niche was a pattern that some organism ÒtracedÓ or

ÒinscribedÓ in an environment.

Back THEN I was the concept of pattern to explicate the concept of niche. In this current

context, the focus, of course, is on pattern.

That is, I am developing ÒpatternÓ as a term of art and so I want to recast the ordinary

notion just a bit. The ordinary notion of patterns is that, well, theyÕre everywhere. The ordinary

notion is indifferent to how patterns are identified. The means of identification is off stage; itÕs

not even implicit; itÕs simply not there.

IÕve decided that that wonÕt do for my purposes. As a term of art the concept of pattern is

inherently relational. As a tentative formulation, a PATTERN can be said to be inscribed in a

matrix by a vehicle. In the case of a biological niche, the organism is the vehicle, the environment

is the matrix, and adaptation (or perhaps merely living) is the means of inscription.What I like about the niche discussion is that it isnÕt about humans. The niche is not a

pattern conceived by humans. ThatÕs one thing.

The other is that patterns emerge as the result of a process. Niches emerge as organisms

live and become adapted to their environment. The patterns IÕm interested in are the result of

human perception and cognition.

Here are my old notes, from 1988, somewhat edited.

* * * * *

The last time I looked (in the 1970s) I was unable to find a clean definition of the niche, and of

correlative terms such as environment and habitat. Environments are complex and so are

organisms. The niche seems to be a pattern which exists only in the relationship between anorganism and its environment .

There are biologists who talk about a niche as existing independently of any organism.

The niche exists and the organism moves into it. This really isn't satisfactory. For there is a sense

in which organisms create niches. And IÕm not thinking of the concept of niche construction,

where an animal actively modifies its environment by building nests and trails and so forth,

though that is obviously as aspect of the process.

One can think of an organism as a set of capacities. Given some pre-existing organism, it

creates a niche when placed into the appropriate environment, namely, an environment whose

structure corresponds to the organism's capacities.

But, in fact, there is no such thing as a pre-existing organism. Organisms always exist in

environments, to which they are always (more or less) adapted.

In the abstract we can imagine talking about the material, energetic, and informaticpatterns which are such that organisms, perhaps of a specific chemistry (such as one based on

carbon and oxygen), are evolved to exploit them. Consider the following definition (which

presupposes the arguments in A Note on Why Natural Selection Leads to Complexity28):A niche is a collection environmental phenomena in which low energy utilization of

information allows an organism economically to obtain the energy and materials it needs

to maintain its life.




19

As far as I can tell they only way to identify such a collection of environmental phenomena is to

design and an organism which can successfully exploit them. And the best way to ÒdesignÓ such

an organism is to evolve it.

I take it then that there is no way to identify a pattern of environmental affordances (to

borrow a term from J. J. Gibson) independently of identifying an organism that utilizes them. To

be sure, you may read a biologist talking about such things as Òa niche for two kilogram night

foraging herbivore,Ó but thatÕs only because they know that such creatures exist and have one inmind when writing those words. Such formulations sound like the biologist is simply looking at

an environment and spelling out a niche pattern based on general theoretical notions. But those

theoretical notions are based the examination of real organisms in real environments.

ItÕs irreducible: Niches are patterns, and those patterns are ÒidentifiedÓ by the organisms

that occupy the niches. ThatÕs the simplest way. And itÕs not very simple. The universe is

irreducibly complex.

* * * * *

This account of patterns, and my opening remarks about computing, suggests that the following

article is a useful extension of the above remarks. If I am not mistaken, though, those I made the

above remarks after Hays and I had at least finished a draft of this article.

William L. Benzon and David G. Hays. A Note on Why Natural Selection Leads to Complexity.

Journal of Social and Biological Structures 13: 33-40, 1990.29

Abstract: While science has accepted biological evolution through natural selection, there is no

generally agreed explanation for why evolution leads to ever more complex organisms. Evolution

yields organismic complexity because the universe is, in its very fabric, inherently complex, as

suggested by Ilya Prigogine's work on dissipative structures. Because the universe is complex,

increments in organismic complexity yield survival benefits: (1) more efficient extraction of

energy and matter, (2) more flexible response to vicissitudes, (3) more effective search. J.J.

Gibson's ecological psychology provides a clue to the advantages of sophisticated information

processing while the lore of computational theory suggests that a complex computer is neededefficiently to perform complex computations (i.e. sophisticated information processing).




20

Patterns as Epistemological Objects

When I posted From Quantification to Patterns in Digital Criticism I was thinking out loud. IÕvebeen thinking about patterns for years, and about pattern-matching as a computational process. I

had this shoot-from-the-hip notion that patterns, as general as the concept is, deserve some kind

of special standing in methodological thinking about so-called digital humanities Ð likely other

things as well, but certainly digital humanities. And then I discovered that Rens Bod was thinking

about patterns30 as well. And his thinking is independent of mine, as is Stephen RamsayÕs.31

So now we have three independent lines of thought converging on the idea of patterns.

Perhaps thereÕs something there.

But what? ItÕs not as though thereÕs anything new in the idea of patterns. ItÕs a perfectly

ordinary idea. THATÕs not a disqualification, but I think we need something more if we want to

use the idea of pattern as a fundamental epistemological concept

From Niche to PatternIn my previous patterns post, ÒPatternÓ as a Term of Art, I argued that the biological niche is a

pattern in the sense we need. ItÕs a pattern that arises between a species and its sustaining

environment. Organisms define niches. While biologists sometimes talk of niches pre-existing the

organisms that come to occupy them, that just a rhetorical convenience.

That example is important because it puts patterns Òout thereÓ in the world rather than

them being something that humans perceive in the world. But now itÕs the human case that

interests me, patterns that humans see in the world. But we donÕt necessarily regard all the

patterns we see as being ÒrealÓ, that is, as existing independently of our perception.

When we look at a cloud and see an elephant we donÕt conclude that an elephant is up

there in the sky, or that the cloud decided to take on an elephant-like form. We know that the

cloud has its own dynamics, whatever they might be, and we realize that the elephant form is

something we are projecting onto the world.But that is something we learn. ItÕs not given in the perception itself. And that learning is

guided by cultural conventions.

We see all kinds of things in the world. Not only does the mind perceive patterns, it seeks

them out. What happens when we start to interact with the phenomena we perceive? ThatÕs when

we learn whether or not the elephant we saw is real or a projection.

With this in mind, consider this provisional formulation:

An observer defines a pattern over objects.

The parallel formulation for ecological niche would be:

A species defines a niche over the environment .

The pattern, the niche, exists in the relationship between a supporting matrix (the environment, anarray of objects) and the organizing vehicle (the species, the observer). Just as thereÕs no way of

identifying an ecological niche independently of specifying an organism occupying the niche, so

thereÕs no way of specifying a (perceptual or cognitive) pattern independently of specifying a

mind the charts the pattern.

30 http://www.bmgn-lchr.nl/index.php/bmgn/article/view/RN%3ANBN%3ANL%3AUI%3A10-

1-11003031 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishfacpubs/57/



21

As a practical matter, of course, we often talk of patterns simply as being there, in the world, in

the data. And our ability to understand how the mind captures patterns is still somewhat limited.

But if we want to understand how patterns function as epistemological primitives, then we must

somehow take the perceiving mind into account.

The point of this formulation is to finesse the question of just what characteristic of some

collection of objects makes them a suitable candidate for bearing a pattern. We can understandhow patterns function as epistemological primitives without having to specify, as part of our

inquiry, what characteristics an ensemble must have to warrant treatment as a pattern. We as

epistemologists are not in the business of making that determination. ThatÕs the job of a

perceptual-cognitive system.

Our job is to understand how such systems come to accept some patterns as real while

rejecting others. How does that happen? Through interaction, and the nature of that interaction is

specific to the patterns involved.

Two Simple Examples: Animals and Stars

Let us consider some simple examples. Consider the patterns a hunter must use to track an

animal, footprints, disturbed vegetation, sounds of animal movement, and so forth. The causal

relationship between the animal and the signs in the pattern is obvious enough; the signs are

produced by animal motion. The hunter knows that the pattern is real when the animal is spotted.

Of course, the animal may not always be spotted, yet the pattern is real. In the case of failure the

hunter must make a judgment about whether the pattern was real, but the animal simply got away,

or whether the perceived pattern was simply mistaken.

Constellations of stars in the sky are a somewhat more complex example. That a certain

group of stars is seen as Ursa Major, or the Big Dipper, is certainly a projection of the human

mind onto the sky. The set of stars in a given constellation do not form a group organized by

internal causal forces in the way that a planetary system does. The planets in such a system are

held there by mutual gravitational attraction. The gravitational force of the central star would be

the largest component in the field, with the planets exerting lesser force in the system.

But the stars in the Big Dipper are not held in that pattern by their mutual gravitational

forces. Whatever that pattern is, it is not evidence of a local gravitational system among the

constituents of the pattern. Rather, that pattern depends on the relationship between the observer

and those objects. An observer at a different place in the universe, near one of the stars, for

example, wouldnÕt be able to perceive that pattern. And yet the stars have the same positions

relative to one another and to the rest of the (nearby) universe.

Our knowledge of constellations is quite different from the hunterÕs knowledge of

tracking lore. One cannot interact with constellations in the way one interacts with animals. While

one can pursue and capture or kill animals, one canÕt do anything to constellations. They are

beyond our reach. But we can observe them and note their positions in the sky. And we can use

them to orient ourselves in the world and thus discover that they serve as reliable indicators of our

position in geographic space.

These two patterns attain reality in a different way. The forces that make the animalÕs

trail a real pattern are local ones having to do with the interaction between the animal and its

immediate surrounding. The forces ÒbehindÓ the constellations are those of the large-scale

dynamics of the universe as ÒprojectedÓ onto the point from which the pattern is viewed.

A Case from the Humanities

Now letÕs consider an example thatÕs closer to the digital humanities. Look at the following

figure:



22

The red triangle is the pattern and I am defining it over the vertical bars. That is, I examined the

bars and decided that theyÕre approximating a triangle, which I then superimposed on those bars.

The bars preexisted the triangle.

I also created those bars, but through a process that is different and separate from that for

the triangular pattern. Each bar represents a paragraph in Joseph ConradÕs Heart of Darkness; the

length of the bar is proportional to the number of words in the paragraph. The leftmost bar

represents the first paragraph in the text while the rightmost bar represents that last paragraph in

the text. The other bars represent the other paragraphs, in textual order from left to right.

The bars vary quite a bit in length. The shortest paragraph in the text is only two words

long while the longest is, I believe, 1502 words long. In any given run of, say, twenty paragraphs,

paragraph lengths vary considerably, though there isnÕt a single paragraph over 200 words long in

the final 30 paragraphs or so.

But why, when the distribution of paragraph lengths is so irregular, am I asserting the

overall distribution has the form of a triangle? What IÕm asserting is that that is the envelope of

the distribution. There are a few paragraphs outside the envelope, but great majority are inside it.

The significant point, though, is that there is one longest paragraph and it is more or less

in the middle. That paragraph is considerably longer (by over 300 words) than the next longest

paragraphs, which are relatively close to it. The paragraphs toward the beginning and the end, the

end especially, tend to be short.

What weÕd like to know, though, is whether this distribution is an accident, and so of

little interest, or whether it is a sign of a real process. In the first place I observe that, in my

experience, paragraphs over 500 words long are relatively rare Ð this is the kind of thing that can

be easily checked with the large text databases we now have. Single paragraphs of over 1000

words must be very rare indeed.

And that longest pattern is quite special. It is very strongly marked. If you know ConradÕs

story, then you know it centers on two men, Kurtz, a trader in the Congo, and Marlow, the captain

of a boat sent to retrieve him. Marlow narrates the story, but it isnÕt until weÕre well into the story

that Kurtz is even mentioned. And then we donÕt learn much about him, just that heÕs a trader

deep in the interior and he hasnÕt been heard from in a long time.

That longest paragraph is the first time we learn much about Kurtz. ItÕs a prŽcis of his

story. The circumstances in which Marlow gives us this prŽcis are extraordinary.



23

His narrative technique is simple; he tells events in the order in which they happened Ð

his need for a job, how he got that particular job, his arrival at the mouth of the Congo River, and

so forth. With that longest paragraph, however, Marlow deviates from chronological order.

He introduces this information about Kurtz as a digression from the story of his journey

up the Congo River to KurtzÕs trading station. Some of what he tells us about Kurtz happened

long before Marlow set even sail; and some of what we learn happened after the point in

MarlowÕs journey where he introduces this paragraph as a digression.What brought on this digression? Well, MarlowÕs boat was about a dayÕs journey from

KurtzÕs camp when they were attacked from the shore. The helmsman was speared through the

chest and fell bleeding to the deck. ItÕs at THAT point that Marlow interrupts his narrative to tell

us about the remarkable Mr. Kurtz Ð whom he had yet to meet. Once he finishes this most

important digression he returns to his bleeding helmsman and throws him overboard, dead. Just

before he does so he tells us that he doesnÕt think KurtzÕs life was worth that of the helmsman

who died trying to retrieve him.

That paragraph Ð its length, content, and position in the text Ð is no accident. That

statement, of course, is a judgement, only based only on my experience and knowledge as a critic,

which have been shaped by the discipline of academic literary criticism. But itÕs not an

unreasonable judgement; it is of a piece with the thousands of such judgements woven into the

fabric of our discipline.Conrad may not have consciously planned to convey that information in the longest

paragraph in the text, and to position that paragraph in the middle of his text, but whatever

unconscious cognitive and affective considerations were driving his craft, they put that

information in that place in the text and at that length. The apex of that triangle is real, not merely

in the sense that the paragraph is that long, but in the deeper sense that it is a clue about the

psychodynamic forces shaping the text.

Just what are those psychodynamic forces? I donÕt know. The hunter can tell us in great

detail about how the animal left traces of its movement over the land. Astronomers and

astrophysicists can tell us about constellations in great detail. But the pattern of paragraph lengths

in Heart of Darkness is a mystery.

* * * * *

Why do I consider this example at such length? For one thing, IÕm interested in texts. Patterns in

text are thus what most interest me.

Secondly, that example makes the point that description is one thing, explanation another.

IÕve described the pattern, but IÕve not explained it. Nor do I have any clear idea of how to go

about explaining it.

ThereÕs a lot of that going around in the digital humanities. Patterns have been found, but

we donÕt know how to explain them. We may not even know whether or not the pattern reflects

something ÒrealÓ about the world or is simply an artifact of data processing.

Third, whereas much of the work in digital humanities involves data mining procedures

that are difficult to understand, this is not like that. Counting the number of words in a paragraph

is simple and straightforward, if tedious (even with some crude computational help). And yet theresult is strange and a bit mysterious. WhoÕd have thought?

Note that I distinguish between the bar chart that displays the word counts and the pattern

I, as analyst, impose on it. When I say that the envelope of paragraph length distribution is

triangular, IÕm making a judgement. That judgement didnÕt come out of the word count itself.

And when I say that that pattern is real, IÕm also making a judgement, one that IÕve justified Ð if

only partially Ð by discussing what happens in that longest paragraph and that paragraphs position

in the text as a whole.



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My sense of these matters is that, going forward, weÕre going to have to get comfortable with

identifying patterns we donÕt know how to explain. We need to start thinking about, theorizing if

you will, what patterns are and how to identify them.

* * * * *

IÕve written a good many posts on Heart of Darkness:http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/heart%20darkness

I discuss paragraph length in two different posts.

http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/07/distribution-of-paragraph-lengths-whats.html

http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/07/hd7-digital-humanities-sandbox-goes-to.html

IÕve called that central sentence the nexus and discuss its position in the text:

http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/07/heart-of-heart-of-darkness.html

In this post I annotate the nexus, adding commentary every two or three sentences:

http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2011/07/heart-of-darkness-6-some-informal-notes.html

HereÕs a downloadable working paper that covers these and other aspects of the text.

http://ssrn.com/abstract=1910279



25

Patterns and Literature

So, patterns. Some patterns operate on the time and scale of sensory perception; we see, hear,smell, touch, and taste things in the course of everyday life. But other patterns require more time

and deliberation. That our solar system consists of planets and asteroids in transit about the sun is

a pattern, but itÕs not one given in sensory perception. Rather, itÕs one that can be inscribed on a

surface (where on can see it at human scale) and that emerged through thousands upon thousands

of observations made by hundreds of individuals conversing over the course of centuries.

Literary texts (and films) are a bit like that. They are devices for capturing patterns of

(mostly, generally) human life. Depending on the text, the reading may take only minutes or

hours, perhaps over the course of days, but the writing likely took longer. Each text rests on a

history of texts from which it draws and against which it reacts, and a body of texts requires a

community to keep it in circulation.

Lifeways and LiteratureSusan Langer (Feeling and Form) would say that these textual patterns embody virtual

experience. Wayne Booth (The Company We Keep) talks of literature as a way of Òtrying outÓ

modes of life, while more recently, Keith Oatley (Such Stuff as Dreams) writes of literary

experience as simulation. We can say that these patterns are meant to be taken up by oneÕs whole

psyche, oneÕs whole being Ð even that they are meant to facilitate unity of being.

Kenneth Burke writes of this in ÒLiterature as Equipment for LivingÓ from The

Philosophy of Literary Form (1973). Using words and phrases from several definitions of the

term ÒstrategyÓ (in quotes in the following passage), he asserts that (p. 298):

... surely, the most highly alembicated and sophisticated work of art, arising in

complex civilizations, could be considered as designed to organize and command

the army of oneÕs thoughts and images, and to so organize them that one

Òimposes upon the enemy the time and place and conditions for fighting

preferred by oneself.Ó One seeks to Òdirect the larger movements and

operationsÓ in one's campaign of living. One Òmaneuvers,Ó and the maneuvering

is an Òart.Ó

Finally, it is not, after all, as though life happens OVER THERE, while literature takes place in a

separate space IN HERE such that literature is completely external to life. ItÕs not that simple.

Literature takes place in and reacts on life.

Interpretive Criticism

Provisionally, we can say that a text represents certain states of affairs in the world; call

that content . Texts use various devices to organize their contents; call that form. In

OatleyÕs terms the content is the world simulated while the form is the ÒmachineryÓ usedto run the simulation.

In critical practice, distinguishing form and content can be difficult. Ordinary

literary criticism, mainstream literary criticism, is focused on interpretation. As far as I

can tell, that seems to be an exercise in re-stating the lifeways captured in a text in adifferent kind of language. Such interpretations are always partial; they always leave

some aspects of a text untouched. And while hermeneutic criticism takes note of textual



26

devices, of formal matters, that is not its focus. It attends to form as a way of explicating

meaning, of retracing the lifeways originally traced in the text.I would further say that such criticism strives to keep in touch with the ÒordinaryÓ

practice of reading and Òtaking upÓ literature. Hence it is common to talk of an

interpretation as a reading of the text. The introduction of technical and quasi-technical

concepts and vocabulary tends to get in the way of such reading and hence isproblematic. On the one hand we hear calls for critics to drop the scientism, as this is

thought to be, and write in ordinary language. On the other hand, critics themselves feel

and express anxiety about their activity, thinking of it as somehow parasitic on primary

texts and not an activity unto itself Ð IÕm thinking here of the anxieties Geoffrey Hartmanexpresses in The Fate of Reading.

But it can be parasitic only if it is (seen as) doing the same thing as literature; it

the aim is to do something different, well then, itÕs no longer parasitic. Biology, for

example, needs living things as its objects of investigation; but no one would think ofbiology as parasitic upon life. And so literary criticism needs texts as objects of

investigation. It is only to the extent that criticism aims, not at the texts, but through the

texts to life itself, that it can be parasitic.

Naturalist Criticism

Insofar as possible, I want to separate the investigation of form from the investigation of content

and, further, to focus on form. IÕm not interested in what a text means; IÕm not primarily

concerned about what it exhibits about human lifeways. I want to examine how the exhibit is

structured, how the simulation is run.

When I write of the importance of description, IÕm mean the description of formal

patterns. Until we know what those patterns are, we cannot hope to understand the mechanisms

behind them. As a practical matter, our sense of what to look for may be informed by our

intuitions, and even models, of those mechanisms. But the emphasis is on describing the form.

In my own work ring-form or center point construction has emerged as a central concern

Ð I suspect that is because its linear symmetry works against, cuts across, the cumulative effectsof textual progression, but thatÕs a digression. In all those texts Ð ÒKubla KhanÓ, Heart of

Darkness, Metropolis, The SorcererÕs Apprentice, Gojira, etc. Ð the formal pattern is cleanly

separable from the context. Their subject matter is quite different but, to a first approximation,

their form is the same.

How does that form work? The form is a pattern that we, as critics, see in the text. What

mechanisms are responsible for that pattern? Obviously we cannot even begin to answer the

question until weÕve described the pattern.

I am tempted to assert that, in the long run, we can treat such patterns as real only if we

can find a mechanism to explain them. Yet I donÕt quite believe that. It is because I believe the

patterns are real that I search for mechanisms that explain them.

An Ethical ImperativeFinally, while the goal of naturalist criticism is not interpretive, much less ethical, there is an

ethical dimension to the activity itself. Let us once again consider Edward SaidÕs lament

(ÒGlobalizing Literary Study,Ó PMLA, Vol. 116, No. 1, 2001, pp. 64-68):

I myself have no doubt, for instance, that an autonomous aesthetic realm exists,

yet how it exists in relation to history, politics, social structures, and the like, is

really difficult to specify. Questions and doubts about all these other relations

have eroded the formerly perdurable national and aesthetic frameworks, limits,



and boundaries almost completely. The notion neither of author, nor of work, nor

of nation is as dependable as it once was, and for that matter the role of

imagination, which used to be a central one, along with that of identity has

undergone a Copernican transformation in the common understanding of it.

If there is any hope of recovering a robust sense of that autonomous aesthetic realm, it is though

an understanding of the devices of literary form.The content of literary works is tied to and anchored in Òhistory, politics, social

structures, and the like.Ó But the way the context is captured and presented is anchored in the

inherent powers of the human mind. The formal patterns of texts are the traces of those powers. It

follows that the way to understand those powers is to understand literary form.

The formalists WERE right in believing that form conferred (a degree of) autonomy on

texts. But they were wrong in thinking that that autonomy applied to the meaning in a way that

lifted it outside of history. The achievements of form are more limited. Form confers upon the

reader the power of using literature to establish a critical distance from his/her historical moment

and thereby to resist it, to work against it. The reader does this, not by apprehending a pre-

existing eternal meaning, but by giving an order to his/her experience that it does not have in the

context of daily life. What the reader then does with that order, that is his/her free choice, as free

as any choice we have.I conclude by observing that, to the extent that a robust understanding of literary form

needs to be based on an appropriate idea of computation, the ethical imperative behind a

naturalist criticism is compatible with, if not inherent in, digital criticism.

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