So, I honestly felt like I was either being pranked or was just missing something crucial while reading this chapter. Like both Caleb and Beth stated, the idea that mapping lliterature shows recentering of villages and rural life around commerce as the Industrial Revolution progressed seems... obvious? Moretti seems to be getting excited about the concept of urban planning, which he dedicates figure 17 to showing. And while this is a basic assertion, I was not really upset at this reading until Moretti's assertion that no one had seen this trend before he put it on a map (53). First, making absoulte statements like this feels like he's asking to be proven wrong, and second, saying that mapping is REQUIRED to see these patterns is a little condescending towards the practice of close reading. Am I supposed to believe that these conclusions are unreachable without the use of maps? I remain completely unconvinced by the necessity of mapping in terms of literary analysis. Hopefully class today can change that for the better, because Moretti hasn't done a great job so far.