• Dr. Nabarun Ghosh

Abstract The emergence of digital humanities (DH) has radically altered the field of English literary studies, reshaping methods of interpretation, pedagogy, and scholarly communication. Traditionally, English literature has been analyzed primarily through the practice of close reading, in which critics focus on language, style, and meaning within individual works. While this method remains foundational, DH introduces computational and archival approaches that extend the range and scale of literary analysis. By using techniques such as text mining, stylometry, topic modeling, distant reading, and geospatial mapping, scholars can now analyze corpora numbering in the thousands or even millions of texts. This macro-analytical perspective has generated new insights into literary history, genre development, thematic trends, and the social circulation of texts, while also raising important methodological and ethical debates. This paper situates the rise of DH in English literary studies within its historical context, beginning with early projects such as the Index Thomisticus and continuing through large-scale digitization efforts like Google Books and HathiTrust. It surveys the major methodological innovations of the field, including TEI-based textual encoding, corpus construction, visualization practices, and the use of specialized software such as Voyant Tools and Gephi. Case studies—including the Women Writers Project, the Whitman Archive, and the Stanford Literary Lab—illustrate the practical application of these methods and demonstrate their capacity to challenge traditional canons and recover marginalized voices. The paper also addresses critical debates surrounding algorithmic opacity, corpus bias, copyright restrictions, and the politics of labor and infrastructure. It argues that DH should not be seen as a replacement for traditional humanistic interpretation but as an expansion of it, enabling new scales of inquiry while demanding transparency, reflexivity, and ethical responsibility. Ultimately, the paper contends that DH represents both an opportunity and a challenge: an opportunity to reconceptualize English literature as a dynamic, data-rich field, and a challenge to ensure that the humanities retain their critical, inclusive, and interpretive commitments in an increasingly digital age.

digital humanities, distant reading, text mining, visualization, TEI, canon, pedagogy, English literature

"Reframing English Literature within Digital Humanities", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.12, Issue 11, page no.e26-e31, November-2025, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2511403.pdf

"Reframing English Literature within Digital Humanities", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.12, Issue 11, page no. ppe26-e31, November-2025, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2511403.pdf