Quantitative Drama Analysis
Quantitative Drama Analysis is a branch within quantitative statistical literary studies that deals with the analysis of those aspects of dramatic texts that are countable and determinable.
Explanation
The starting point is often the speech act of a character, the length of which is recorded in the number of words and characters. At the same time, it is recorded who is present besides the speaker and who is absent. If you depict the staff horizontally and the replicas vertically (or vice versa), you get a matrix that is the starting point for further analysis steps. The overall matrix represents the configuration structure, within which the quantitative correspondence and contrast relationships of the staff can be specified and the scope and duration of individual configurations can be measured. Semantic differentiations result from the dialogue (duolog, polylog) and the interruption frequency of the replicas. Typological features of dramatic texts can be deduced from the configuration density. It shows the relationship between the positions filled in the matrix and the total number of positions that can be filled.
Marcus uses the matrix to differentiate the dramatic personnel. From the frequency of the meeting of people in scenes and situations or from the non-meeting, he arrives at quantitative statements regarding the proximity and distance and divides the personnel into
- concomitant figures that always appear together such as B. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Hamlet ,
- scenic alternative characters who never meet and
- scenically dominant as well
- scenic independent characters.
A special case is the frequency distribution of replica lengths, which goes back to Wilhelm Fuchs and sentence lengths. The most common replica length used in Shakespeare's dramas before 1599 is 9 words. From 1599 this maximum value goes back to 4 words. This results in more dialogue, action-oriented language and dramatic speed. This quantitative and statistically verifiable artistic development falls under Shakespeare's co-ownership of the new Globe Theater .
Computational stylometric studies were carried out by Matthews and Merriam in the early 1990s to confirm authorship. Texts undoubtedly belonging to an author have been classified linguistically. Texts that were not clearly assigned were brought into the input layer by simulating a neural system and processed in the hidden layer so that a clear parameter provided information about the author in the output layer. This work turned out to be enlightening for the collaboration between Marlowe , Fletcher, and Shakespeare . Since 2013 there has been a stylometric program called R (The R Foundation for Statistical Computing), which encompasses the commonly used methods such as multidimensional scaling , principal component analysis , cluster analysis , bootstrap consensus trees and artificial intelligence methods ( delta difference , supporting vector programs , naive Bayes Calculations of the conditional probability, k-close neighbors (k-nn) for estimating the probability density function and <NSC> nearest shrunken centroids) combined. Maciej Eder, Jan Rybicki and Mike Kestemont expanded R Stylo by adding the sliding component to the methods of delta difference and classification . Instead of an overall evaluation of a text, word windows are evaluated one after the other so that possible collaborations become visible.
Example of a configuration structure: Excerpt from The False One by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
literature
- Wilhelm Fucks, on the legal concept of an exact literary study, explains using sentences and sentence sequences. in Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft and Linguistik 1, Heft 1/2, 1970/71, 113-137
- Hartmut Ilsemann. Shakespeare Disassembled: A Quantitative Analysis of Shakespeare's Dramas , Literary Studies No 5, Heinrich Plett (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1998
- Hartmut Ilsemann. William Shakespeare - Dramas and Apocrypha: A Stylometric Investigation with R , Aachen: Shaker, 2014
- Salomon Marcus. A mathematical-linguistic drama model , magazine for literary studies and linguistics I / II (1971): 139-52.
- Matthews, Robert et al. Thomas VN Merriam, Neural Computation in Stylometry I: An Application to the Works of Shakespeare and Fletcher , Literary and Linguistic Computing , vol. 8, no 4, 1993, 203-209 and Using neural networks to distinguish literary style , in Handbook of Neural Computation , R. Beale and E. Fiesler (Eds.), Oxford, 1996.
- Manfred Pfister. Das Drama: Theory and Analysis , Munich: Fink, 1977