Searching the Archives with Dickens and Hawthorne: Databases and Aesthetic Judgment after the New Historicism

As close reading comes under increasing duress, and as electronic databases offer unprecedented access to an overwhelming multitude of texts, literary scholars may feel that aesthetics are becoming marginalized in matters of interpretation. This essay argues that searchable electronic archives and the legacy of the New Historicism actually vindicate the power of aesthetics, a dynamic anticipated by Charles Dickens and Nathaniel Hawthorne (as well as Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe) during their own information revolution.