This paper positions Franco Moretti’s “materialist conception of literary form” as a pivotal theoretical framework for establishing the methodological legitimacy of Digital Humanities (DH) in literary studies. Responding to critiques that DH merely supplements close reading without offering novel insights, it argues that Moretti’s distant reading paradigm fundamentally redefines the relationship between literary form and social systems, revealing hidden selection mechanisms within literary history. This establishes DH not merely as a practical tool, but as an indispensable analytical perspective at a conceptual level.

Moretti’s materialism critically engages with Marxist traditions while rejecting economic determinism. Instead, it adopts a model of systemic interaction centered on three dimensions of form: (1) ​Micro-level techniques​ (e.g., free indirect discourse, clues) act as encodings of class consciousness; (2) ​Mesostructures​ (e.g., linear/circular spatial models in novels) map social power dynamics (e.g., colonial economic trajectories in Austen); (3) ​Macro-level genre competition​ (e.g., novel vs. epic) represents "conflicts formalized through literary genres." This framework depends on a triangular feedback system of reader-text-market, where formal evolution follows a Darwinian logic of "variation-selection-inheritance-extinction." Quantitative DH methods – such as book history data on printing efficiency or genre lifecycle curves – empirically validate this model, demonstrating form's material adaptability (e.g., prose's 40% higher printing efficiency cementing its dominance over verse).

A case study of Moretti's The Bourgeois (2013), interpreted through Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between economic cycles and literary form. The "middlingness" of the bourgeoisie generates a formal duality: economic upswings favour adventurous narratives (e.g., Scott’s historical novels), while downturns shift towards conservative description (e.g., Flaubert’s use of the imperfect tense). Free indirect discourse emerges as a key "device" mediating this tension, embedding bourgeois subjectivity within objective description. DH analysis provides crucial evidence: computational stylistics (e.g., Stanford Literary Lab’s analysis of 2,958 British novels) reveals significant correlations between grammatical structures (like the imperfect tense) and narrative logics, linking them to conservative ideology during economic depressions. Furthermore, a global perspective exposes the Eurocentric limitations of traditional theory through formal "deformations" in semi-peripheral regions (e.g., Latin American magical realism).

Ultimately, the paper contends that DH, embodied by distant reading, constitutes a ​paradigmatic shift​ in literary studies. Methodologically, it transcends the text-centrism of close reading through models of "arboreal divergence" (longue durée evolution) and "wave-like diffusion" (spatial circulation), emphasizing the contingency of formal evolution. Theoretically, DH moves beyond being a mere tool, becoming integral to the production of form itself (e.g., frequency analysis redefining "style"). Applied to the Chinese context, DH offers pathways to capture the "emergence" of new bourgeois cultural forms (e.g., genre competition in web literature) within global cycles of hegemony transition.

By synthesizing the materialist conception of form with systems theory, this paper affirms DH as an independent paradigm essential for dismantling Eurocentrism and reconstructing a dynamic, globally-oriented literary history.