This paper employs a dialectical mixed methods approach to revisit aprevious study in comparative literature on discourses in literary criticism, usingdata visualizations to analyze the original material, 700 digitized literary bookreviews from the years 1906, 1956, and 2006. The aim is to explore alternativeways of understanding the review material by comparatively examining visualiza-tions on word and sentence levels, publication years, and genre categorizations.In the paper, we discuss significant patterns that emerge in the visualizationsand how a combination of computational and interpretative analysis providescomplementary perspectives on the text collection. Furthermore, drawing uponRussian formalist Viktor Shklovksy, we suggest the notion of “defamiliarization”as a conceptual framework for the process of looking at familiar research mate-rial anew through the lens of visualization, potentially uncovering previouslyoverlooked aspects of the data. We conclude by stressing the critical importanceof contextual sensibility for understanding the visualizations.