Distant Reading the Social Novel in Romania. Theoretical and Taxonomical Challenges

Abstract

The most recent theoretical projects dedicated to comparative and literary studies challenge the very critical vocabulary that we have inherited from the more traditional theoretical discourses such as hermeneutics. Transnational studies, World Literature, quantitative and digital formalism are, at the moment, some of the most methodologically meticulous subdomains in contemporary research, striving to simplify the academic language in order to achieve scientific specialization. Following this general direction, the present article aims to re-evaluate one of the most frequently misrepresented novelistic subgenre that poses many difficulties to any quantitative approach. As a typology, the social novel has been invoked without ever being discussed theoretically. The purpose of this paper is to retrace the many uses and meanings of this typology in critical discourse and to propose the specialization of this subgenre for the sake of further quantitative and digital investigations.