Abstract
The present study proposes an experimental exploration of the Romanian novel written between 1920 and 1940 through the use of stylometry, a method of distant reading employed for the statistical analysis of style. Drawing from the most recent advances in the field of computational stylistics, we select a formal standpoint from which we seek to investigate the relation between the Romanian novelistic canon and minor, tertiary novels published in the same. In our test cases, we will attempt to establish some of the more promising aspects of stylometric analysis, as well as single out the experiments that yield no relevant result. Because of the relative novelty of the method, the purpose of our investigations is to offer a kind of pilot experiment that can illustrate the benefits of using computational methods on Romanian literary corpora.
Highlights
The following is an experiment, an exploratory case study on the merits of computational analysis applied to Romanian literature
Stylometry has evolved into various types of statistical stylistics, with machine-learning supervised methods enabling it to cover a variety of operations from authorship attribution (Juola 233-334) to comparing the styles of authors or establishing stylistic timelines – a method known as stylochronometry (Holmes 111-17)
As is the case of almost any distant reading method, investigations employing network analysis are rather scarce in the field of Romanian literary studies (Modoc, Internaționala [201-17]; Modoc, Rețeaua [102-106]; Gârdan and Modoc [52-65]; Gârdan [87-91]; Pojoga et al, Character Network 23-47); even fewer use computational approaches
Summary
The following is an experiment, an exploratory case study on the merits of computational analysis applied to Romanian literature. Most often used in authorship attribution studies, it has a surprisingly long history, dating back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when Augustus de Morgan found that the authenticity of St. Paul’s writings might be established by measuring the length of the words used in his Epistles (Kenny 1). As is the case of almost any distant reading method, investigations employing network analysis are rather scarce in the field of Romanian literary studies (Modoc, Internaționala [201-17]; Modoc, Rețeaua [102-106]; Gârdan and Modoc [52-65]; Gârdan [87-91]; Pojoga et al, Character Network 23-47); even fewer use computational approaches. The purpose of our investigations is to offer a kind of pilot experiment, illustrating the benefits of using computational methods on Romanian literary corpora
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