I found these readings interesting and useful because the author reveals new ways of thinking about information, by transposing it into a visual form. For instance the chapter on graphs looks at the rise of the novel in Europe, by plotting the number of novels released per year, by country. Just by 'shifting one's gaze', you can see trends that wouldn't normally be apparent otherwise, such as the effects of major historical events like the Napoleonic War and the French Revolution. Another graph focuses on gender in literary genres, with one line for works by female authors and another for males. What it reveals is that as the popularity of one goes down, the other invariable goes up. The point to take away is that this trend is not just a phase but a repeating cycle. By revealing this form or structure (morphology), one can glean the 'hidden tempo' or internal shape of the subject.
The chapter on maps presents a form of spatial modelling. The author discusses the 'village' genre of the 18-19th centuries, and develops several ways to study it. He begins with a map of a small English village at the center of some of these stories. This standard map is useful for navigation. Then an abstracted map is shown, with several circles depicting major characters in the center and minor ones without. Another one shows what is important to these characters, from life events to foreign objects. The more 'rural' concerns are in the center, because these are what the characters deal with everyday, within their 2-3 mile radius. The more exotic things are on the edge, because there isn't as much call for them (like fancy cuff links from the city). But as the genre progresses and major shifts (forces) happen such as the industrial revolution, new maps show the character's world expanding far beyond their village. Soon after, the village genre itself mostly goes away.
The chapter on trees uses Darwin's evolutionary theory as a base, and examines modelling literature via trees. What is easy to miss about Darwin's tree isn't just that variation occurs, but that the most diverse cases are the ones that are successful. Applying this to detective stories, the author discovers that by tracing certain characteristics in writing (the presence of clues, whether they are useful, visible, decode-able etc.) one can see what leads to sales or not. Some authors caught on about clues and their stories sold well, while others didn't and disappeared. Even Arthur Conan Doyle took some time to develop a winning combination of story traits in his mysteries, and by plotting his Sherlock Holmes stories on a tree, this progression is revealed.
By modelling literary research in a visual way with graphs, maps or trees, it is possible to see trends that would not be evident otherwise; seeing the forest for the trees.
