Visualization of Literature

Many times when we are analyzing literature, it can be helpful to get a graphical representation of that model. Whether we have a computer program count the amount of times a word appears, or graphing the amount of words in each sentence, or sentences in each paragraph. These visualizations give us a new look at something that used to seem familiar. Looking at a piece of literature graphically was a hard idea to grasp, and for a while took me a lot of time to understand. We analyzed a paper by a woman who looked for the amount of time girls and guys feet were referenced in the Harry Porter novels. The results were surprising, the amount of times men feet were references was sometime tripled that of how many a woman’s was referenced. When a female character’s body part was mentioned, it was always mentioned with “weak” words. While male characters by contrast were measured with “strong” words. This article found that because of this analysis, she concluded that the Harry Porter series has a slight sexist aspect against women. Using graphical and data representation she was able to prove her point in a way another method could have not. It was very interesting to see the steps she took to come to this conclusion, and helped me better understand literature by visual representation.

Written on September 18, 2016 by Matthew Schindler