The rise of a new paradigm of literary studies: The challenge of digital humanities

Abstract

Digital humanities has become a heatedly discussed and even debated topic among humanities scholars. It is true that it has made a revolutionary impact on the teaching and academic research of humanities scholars, which has also raised a severe challenge to traditional humanities scholars who are not ready for the impact of this trend. But in any event, it indicates a shift of paradigm of research, which marks the rise of a new academic paradigm and reading method in humanities studies. It at least bridges the gap between science and technology and the humanities and makes humanities scholars more efficiently digitizing their research results. This is especially true in literary studies, or more specifically, comparative and world literature studies. The so-called “distant reading” is a new way of researching world literature. Comparatists could use such a distant reading method to have a general picture of the historical development and evolution of world literature. But at the same time, close reading is also important which could for literary scholars to have a deep-going research and analysis of individual literary works. Thus it is necessary for comparatists to combine the two different reading methods in comparative and world literature studies.