Clarissa, by the Numbers:Novel Experience andthe Aesthetics of Quantification

Abstract

This essay rethinks a digital humanities approach to literary-historical research by arguing that data is more compatible with narrative than has been heretofore suggested. Taking Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747-48) as its case study, it examines enumeration as a form of literary characterization in the British novel, a process that conveys meaning through an accounting of time spent in everyday life. This approach to character proposes it is through writing, quantifying, and reviewing that character manifests, rather than as a divulgence of privacy or interiority.