Digital "Close" Reading

So I'm testing out a theory. I recently read Stanley Fish's article on The Digital Humanities and interpretation entitled Mind Your P's and B's. If you haven't read his three article series on the Digital Humanities, you are seriously missing out. Major kudos to my classmate Kaleigh for getting in touch with him about her project!

Anywho, in this article he asserts that we can begin our interpretation by using the tools of the digital age (i.e. a simple computer search for the number of p's and b's in a passage) as the spring board for our interpretation, by doing some very quick text mining, seeing what the numbers reveal, and interpreting those numbers. In Fish's reply to Kaleigh's email, he says the reverse might also be possible, which is what I've always considered text mining useful for: "If you had formulated a reading of Shakespeare and wanted to know whether certain formal patterns would lend it support , it might well be useful to run the numbers."

Might nothing, Mr. Fish. I say we come to the text with our interpretation pretty much already in our heads according to our life experience. Certain things are going to jump out at us and we're just mining the text for more support for our position. Hence, the digital tools we have just speed up that process.



Ah but what numbers do we run? How do we know what will best support our hypothesis and where in the text it will be? I've always stumbled upon these things serendipitously it seems or had my interpretation in my head before I read or reread the text for support (pre-digital days). Hence my delay on my textual analysis post... I knew I wanted to do this digitally, but wasn't sure where to begin since it's a new way of doing analysis.

So I decided to use my kindle app to search for evidence of folk belief in the text. Where better to start than with the word "magic" no? I turned up 20 matches for the word in the entire works of Shakespeare. Well, there you are folks; magical. Didn't you ever have someone do this with the Book of Mormon in your institute class? They get fixated on a word or concept like love or 'heart' and then they use their scriptures on CD to search that word and find it occurs a certain number of times in the scriptures and come to the conclusion: "see! God IS love!" Woo hoo! This has it's value and all but it's not really deep analysis. It's not really thinking about the work. So where do I go from here...?

So I take a look at one of the references here. Ah! I remember reading this in Othello now. It's Desdemona's daddy all in a huff over her marriage to Othello. Here's the passage:

BRABANTIO: O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow'd my daughter? Damn'd as thou art, thou hast enchanted her; For I'll refer me to all things of sense, If she in chains of magic were not bound, Whether a maid so tender, fair and happy, So opposite to marriage that she shunned The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, Would ever have, to incur a general mock, Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom Of such a thing as thou, to fear, not to delight. Judge me the world, if 'tis not gross in sense That thou hast practised on her with foul charms, Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals That weaken motion: I'll have't disputed on; 'Tis probable and palpable to thinking. I therefore apprehend and do attach thee For an abuser of the world, a practiser Of arts inhibited and out of warrant. Lay hold upon him: if he do resist, Subdue him at his peril.

Shakespeare, William (2011-09-07). The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Kindle Locations 90232-90249). Latus ePublishing. Kindle Edition. 

 I have highlighted all the references to magic and the occult in yellow and the negative references to Othello's nationality in red. Clearly, Brabantio associates the two, for according to him, Desdemona could not prefer a "sooty bosom... such as" Othello's over the rich and curly-haired babes of her own nation unless she were drugged or magicked.

It leads me to wonder what kinds of superstitions Europeans held about the Moorish people. Obviously, Brabantio believes Othello capable of wizardry which were clearly against the law or "out of warrant". I have no doubt that if this passage is not based in folklore about the Moors, it certainly would perpetuate it.

My search for magic lead me to a specific passage that I was then able to analyze further. I would not have found this passage otherwise so the digital tool I used to search Shakespeare's works acted as a springboard for further analysis. So there you have it Mr. Fish.