Experimental Criticism

A fascinating guide to Franco Moretti’s literary criticism

Experimental Criticism offers a series of close critical engagements with Franco Moretti, one of the world’s most innovative literary thinkers. Moretti is the author of among other works Signs Taken for Wonders, Modern Epic and Graphs, Maps, Trees.

He is perhaps best known for his computational ‘distant reading’ of vast numbers of literary texts at the Stanford Literary Lab. In this book Francesco de Cristofaro and Stefano Ercolino lead a lively exploration of Moretti’s protean, experimental approach to literary criticism. Topics range from evolutionary theory and the sociology of literary forms to world literature and the Digital Humanities. A concluding part is dedicated to one of Moretti’s most prized research objects: the novel.


Experimental Criticism recovers Moretti’s origins on the Italian Trotskyist Left and is enriched by essays from Moretti himself on Lukács’s Theory of the Novel and the tension between ‘close’ and ‘distant’ reading. ‘Why study literature?’, Moretti asks. For the pleasure of reducing complex things to their simple elements. To bring them back to earth.Francesco de Cristofaro teaches comparative literature at the University of Naples Federico II. He is the author of Zoo di romanzi (Zoo of Novels), Letterature comparate (Comparative Literature) and La palla al balzo (Leaping at the Chance).

Stefano Ercolino teaches literary theory and comparative literature at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. His books include The Maximalist Novel, The Novel-Essay and, with Massimo Fusillo, Negative Empathy in Literature and the Arts (forthcoming).