Towards a Research Agenda for Data-driven Approaches to Literary Periods
If literary periods can be and have been shaped by literary historians after the fact, what does that mean for data-driven approaches to literary history? In other words, are literary periods post-hoc constructions and if they are, does it follow that literary evolution is in fact characterized by slow, continuous change? Or is there textual evidence for, say, an alternation of phases of relative stability and phases of fast-paced change? What kind of textual evidence, on what levels of description, would be required to define the chronological limits and textual characteristics of literary periods? These are some of the questions I would like to address in this talk.
In order to do so, I will approach the issue from two related perspectives: First, I will scrutinize recent work in data-driven, quantitative approaches to periodization in literary history for answers to the above-mentioned questions. I will then build on this assessment and describe some of the key practical as well as methodological challenges the field is currently facing. Ultimately, what will emerge from this double perspective is a research agenda for data-driven, quantitative approaches to literary periodization, a field of study in which, I argue, most of the work remains to be done.
This lecture is organized in conjunction with the 2018 edition of the annual conference of The Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages Series (CHLEL): ‘Period Shapers in Literary History’. Attending the speaker’s keynote lecture is free and open to all, but registration is required. Please register by sending an email to platformdh@uantwerpen.be.
