To Read Literature in New Ways?

I couldn't resist blogging about this New York Times article about the Victorian Books project that exploited Google's scanned corpus of Victorian literature. The project searched for key words characteristic of Victorian literature and attempts to draw conclusions about the nature of the Victorian mindset as exemplified in that literature.

Although the method doesn't replace good old-fashioned reading, rereading, and close-reading, it does suggest that the digital age does hold the possibility of allowing new insights into literature. I would really like our chapter to think about how the digital revolution has changed the way we read, not just what we read (blogs, websites, social networking sites).

--Felicia Steele