Graphic Criticism

Graphic Criticism analyzes the semantic families of one hundred Anglophone novels written between 1719 and 1997. The analysis demonstrates that these novels embed a code for semantic distribution, and that code is the way that cultural values are transmitted. The longitudinal aspect of the analysis illuminates what T.S. Eliot called "tradition." Graphic Criticism also zooms in on the particulars of a variety of the corpus texts to reveal Eliot's "individual talent." Thus while the corpus indicates that the proportion of any semantic feature is consistent across time, each writer creatively works and plays with that feature in his or her own style.