Big Data: The Critic against the Algorithm (Distant reading of the Spanish narrative edited in the year 2019)

Abstract

Franco Moretti’s theoretical model based on the distant reading not only is useful to think about the role played by the critic in the age of the algorithms and the future of the philological research with the rise of the Post-humanism, but also to manage the collected information and carry out an accelerated and synthetic analysis about the literary phenomenon by means of the massive data sets abstraction (big data). Consequently, in the light of Moretti’s approach, in this work we address a distant reading of the Spanish narrative’s edition panorama in the year 2019. Through the graphs generated ex professo from the data gathered during the inquiry, this article aims to bring out a general vision upon the current situation of the Spanish narrative in terms of the number of literary works edited in 2019, the yearly publishing plan and the authors distribution according to the place and the year of birth, as well as their gender.