Tracing Literary Influence Via Commercial Algorithm

Reading the Cordell, I was captivated by Ed Finn's project: Using Amazon reviews and recommendations to trace popular reading tastes within a contemporary context. I think this approach could be deepened and expanded to trace literary influence as it pertains to popular taste across a range of books/authors. In other words, I propose a project akin to Six Degrees of Separation. If, for instance, I were to take Sylvia Plath’s Ariel and take the top five poetry and/or fiction recommendations written by other authors (reader’s also liked; related books; customer’s also purchased, etc.) what links could I find between genres, authors, literary style, and/or literary eras. I would also propose cross-checking these recommendations across several sites, including Google Books, Amazon, GoodReads, and Powells, and others. This would not only speak to differences in site algorithms but differences in taste among site users.  Would any common threads emerge? Would any glaring oddities emerge? What explanations could be made for these outliers and commonalities?

Furthermore, could we discover links between genres and authors that are not typically explored in an academic and critical context, and what might these overlooked links reveal about the works in question?

The Storm of Steel

The Storm of Steel is memoir by Ernst Junger, a German soldier, about World War I. The memoir was published in 1920 which became popular in no time. It was translated and published in English in 1929. What I am really interested in at first is the reaction of German reader versus the English reader or the International reader since English was a universal language. Moreover,  since the memoir has two translations to English I want to compare the textual differences between the two in a stylistic study that shows statistics of sentences length, number of adjectives used, nouns, grammatical structure and so on. The imaginary project will allow scholars and students to make a cross culture studies that show how people react to the same text. It would be also a great opportunity to study how a translation might change the authorial “intent” and make readers respond to it in a different way. This kind of study would be really interesting to be done by bilingual scholars because they would find the problem with the translation compared to a regular reader. I believe some of the well-known works are perfect or famous because of the work of the translator who might be better in appealing to the readers than the original author which makes them second authors. The idea behind choosing this specific memoir is because it happen to be read by “the enemies” of the writer and his nation as well. As a result, the readers, especially those who read it around is publication in English, would read it with some kind of bias that would focus their minds on different aspects of the work compared to those reading it now.

Note: the DH tool that I want to use is an imaginary one I do not believe that there is a tool that would allow you to do a stylistic study in a click of a mouse.    

Chaucer DH Project

In my Chaucer class, I'm considering writing an essay over what influence The Canterbury Tales might of had in laying the groundwork for the Protestant Reformation. Different editions of the text would have varied in their inclusion/organization of certain sections. If all editions were grouped together in a digital archive, this would open the doorway for much more efficient analysis. Additionally, having an archive that also included other works by Chaucer could provide additional evidence that supports or disproves a connection between his own socio-religious leanings and those held by leaders of the Reformation. 

Beyond analyzing the history of the text's reception as a single entity, I'll need to find out which of the tales are most relevant to the discussion, how those segments were printed and distributed, and who was their target audience. In class we discussed how some of the more popular tales were combined thematically with other texts. These collections, if they could be found digitally, would speak to a variety of questions relating to the ways different factions used Chaucer's work to promote their own agendas. 

DH Project: Female Authors and Pen Names

Franco Moretti's project analyzing the length and grammatical composition of 7,000 British novel titles inspired me to consider the influence not only of how the title of a novel appears but also the author of a novel. To my knowledge, many women wrote (and indeed still write) novels using a pen name, only their initials, or as the ghost writer for a male novelist--the assumption being, people wouldn't read the novel if they knew it were penned by a woman. A digital humanities project that examined the frequency with which women used pen names--and how women used pen names--over the course of the novel's history would be fascinating.

Some questions I think such a project would answer, or attempt to answer:

• During which time periods did women write under pen names the most? The least?
• Is there a correlation between a time period's political and/or sociohistorical events and the frequency with which women wrote using pen names? (ex: Did women's suffrage inspire women to use their real names as an act of defiance in the 1920s?)

Some challenges I think the project would pose:

• How would you determine the true purpose of a pen name? (ex: J.K. Rowling--a pseudonym in itself--has written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, presumably due to the fame of her own name, and her desire for readers to view her other works distinctly from Harry Potter...although to be fair, she did choose a man's name and not a woman's.) Moreover, some pen names are created simply because they sound better than the author's original name, more catchy and memorable. 

• Considering the often disorganized and haphazard way that author names are cataloged (either by real name or pen name) in library databases, how would you go about gathering the information accurately? 

Nevertheless, I think Moretti's call to action can apply specifically to this possible project: "take those units of language that are so frequent that we hardly notice them, and show how powerfully they contribute to the construction of meaning" (156). 

Wilde Project

The textual studies project I am working on for this class is actually on Oscar Wilde, and I think there are many opportunities for doing a fascinating investigation into the reader/author circuit that Darnton describes through the use of digital archives. These investigations could show how the interpretation of Wilde's texts by readers changed over time, and how this effected the way Wilde himself manipulated his texts. There are several digital archives of Wilde's manuscripts and letters, including the Harry Ransom Center's collection at UT Austin. One could focus on a certain text (The Picture of Dorian Gray seems perfect for such an investigation), and see what Wilde says in his manuscripts and letters about reader reception of the texts. This could provide insight into why Wilde made some of the emendations to this text, but even beyond that this easy access to his manuscripts could provide information about how Wilde's contemporary readers interpreted some of the themes in his novel. The ability to easily look at letters and manuscripts all in one place is invaluable (as opposed to having to physically go to each collection).

There is also room for expansion in Wilde digital archives. Some of them provide copies of actual texts, but as far as I can find there is no archive that has different variants of one text digitized. This would also be incredibly helpful, because the researcher could compare textual variants side by side to see exactly what Wilde changed (instead of having to rely solely on a single print edition with variants or multiple print editions). This would again provide useful information about the reception of certain thematic issues in Wilde's text, thus providing more insight into Victorian culture and readers.

Digital Humanities Project: Joaquin Murietta

Joaquin Murietta, a Mexican folk hero, began in the late 1800's as a character in the novel The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murietta by John Rollins Ridge. Ridge's character was popular, and did not end with his novel. Joaquin Murietta became a character in exciting newspaper stories throughout the 19th century. Eventually the character Joaquin took to the big screen in the Western "Murieta." The progression of Ridge's character from book to newspaper to movie screen is fascinating, but not what makes this an interesting project idea. What makes Joaquin Murietta digital humanities project worthy, is the use of the character as a symbol of freedom during the Chicano movement in the 1960's. I would hope that this DH project might highlight the importance of pop culture figures, and the way that they become much larger and more important than the author might have originally intended. I also would want to create more interest in chicano/a/x literature. My aim would be to make a timeline for the character out of the content UNT already hosts, along with research done on Ridge, and the use of Joaquin Murietta as a figure for the Chicano movement. 

Ideally UNT would sign on and host my project. Another route to consider would be a blog, or website geared toward the digital humanities, possibly HASTAC. Something I would find important in either being hosted by UNT or any other website would for the project to have it's own specific URL in order to make it easier to find.  

Ideally a team of five people total would work on this project. One partner with knowledge of web design and aesthetics- nice color scheme, font, etc.. Other collaboration would include scholars with interest in both Literature and History.

Victorian Shakespeare

 Because the reception, reading, and production history of Shakespeare's plays --  particularly in the in the Victorian period -- has in many ways affected the way that we look at those works today, I would be interested in a digital Victorian Shakespeare archive. Michael Goodman, a PhD candidate at the University of Cardiff, published this September as part of his doctoral work the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive, a collection of 3000 illustrations from Victorian editions of the works of Shakespeare. I find his work to be quite interesting, but I would like to take it further and look at information similar to what Cordell talks about in his piece: newspapers and other periodicals, books, personal diary entries, letters, and the like.  Many of the traditional modes and  moments in productions of specific Shakespearean plays originated in this period, and I would be interested to be able to draw out information about the ways that those modes evolved with in the period and were accepted or others  rejected that may not have reached us today.

 I certainly have very little experience creating digital interface is, and the ability to research these type of artifacts with in the time. It's not something I am fluent at, so both of these would be steep learning curves  and areas I would need help with.  There's also really a question of accessing the correct materials. Knowing when and where to go, and then being able to actually physically access them.

Digital Humanities Project

Using the above image as inspiration, I propose the following digital humanities project focusing on a medieval medical text such as the Cotton Vitellius C iii manuscript Pseudo-Apuleius, Herbarium, which is part of the British Library collection, perhaps also drawing upon other versions that are housed in other libraries around the world.  My project would be educational in nature and not a data project.   

Taking further inspiration from the following film on medieval architecture https://oxfordfriars.wordpress.ncsu.edu/the-film/ , I would like to provide a short film, up to 15 minutes long detailing key features and background into the manuscript.  Information such as how it was produced, compilations of specific texts, the history of the book through the ages, the annotations, botanical features, natural history, and medicinal recipes.  Finally, I would link this to modern day medicine based upon current interdisciplinary research (ex. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/eventrecords/2015-2016/festival/weds21/medicine.aspx, listen to cloud SoundCloud lecture).

This project would be static and provide a moment in time.  Collaboration would include scholars knowledgeable in the medieval manuscripts, history, and medicine both then and now. I would also need some assistance with pulling together a professional video, including a narrator and some music. I might use a digital humanities platform like https://www.zooniverse.org/ or something associated with UNT.  The cost of the project would be finite with the exception of annual hosting costs and I would apply for a grant to fund it.  If I used UNT to host the project, I would project a scholarly image and continued maintenance costs could be built in as required.

Bibliography

https://oxfordfriars.wordpress.ncsu.edu/the-film/  

http://fredgibbs.net/posters/med-sci-med-sm.jpg

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/eventrecords/2015-2016/festival/weds21/medicine.aspx

 

- Diane Culpin, 17 November 2016