These Quick-Reading Times: Distant Reading Moore’s Poetic Style

Reference

Tonra, Justin, “These Quick-Reading Times: Distant Reading Moore’s Poetic Style”, in Write My Name: Authorship in the Poetry of Thomas Moore, Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution, 9 (New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 127–66. DOI:

Abstract

Approaching Moore’s poetic oeuvre through the lens of computational stylistic analysis, the final chapter poses two related questions. First, what effect does the generic diversity of Moore’s poetic corpus have on his stylistic consistency? Second, what practical and conceptual changes occur in the notion of authorship when we approach it through the methods of computational analysis? The arguments of the preceding chapters have emphasised the value of considering different sources of agency in the construction of an authorial persona, and the book’s conclusion examines some logical consequences of that trajectory. A basic assumption of stylometry—the statistical analysis of literary style—insists that a quantifiable and (often) distinctive aspect of an author’s style is unconscious. As stylistic consistency is often posited as a key characteristic of authorship, is this criterion evident in an author, like Moore, whose verse encompasses lyric, satiric, epic, song and ballad, and epistolary modes, and a wide range of poetic forms? In other words, do genre effects and features supersede an author’s stylistic consistency? This chapter reflects on the implications of digital humanities methods for literary analysis, comparing the nature of the evidence, assumptions, and conclusions of stylometry with those of the methods employed in previous chapters.

Keywords

Moore, Poetic corpus, Computational Stylistics, Stylometry, Authorship, Digital Humanities

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BibTex

@incollection{tonra_these_2020,
	address = {New York; Abingdon},
	series = {Poetry and {Song} in the {Age} of {Revolution}},
	title = {These {Quick}-{Reading} {Times}: {Distant} {Reading} {Moore}'s {Poetic} {Style}},
	isbn = {978-0-367-41617-1},
	url = {http://doi.org/10.4324/9781003090960-6},
	abstract = {Approaching Moore’s poetic oeuvre through the lens of computational stylistic analysis, this chapter poses two related questions. First, what effect does the generic diversity of Moore’s poetic corpus have on his stylistic consistency? Second, what practical and conceptual changes occur in the notion of authorship when we approach it through the methods of computational analysis? The arguments of the preceding chapters have emphasised the value of considering different sources of agency in the construction of an authorial persona, and the book’s conclusion examines some logical consequences of that trajectory. A basic assumption of stylometry—the statistical analysis of literary style—insists that a quantifiable and (often) distinctive aspect of an author’s style is unconscious. As stylistic consistency is often posited as a key characteristic of authorship, is this criterion evident in an author, like Moore, whose verse encompasses lyric, satiric, epic, song and ballad, and epistolary modes, and a wide range of poetic forms? In other words, do genre effects and features supersede an author’s stylistic consistency? This chapter reflects on the implications of digital humanities methods for literary analysis, comparing the nature of the evidence, assumptions, and conclusions of stylometry with those of the methods employed in previous chapters. Ultimately, the book concludes with an argument for the necessity of a broad methodological approach to the study of authorship.},
	language = {English},
	number = {9},
	booktitle = {Write my name: authorship in the poetry of {Thomas} {Moore}},
	publisher = {Routledge},
	author = {Tonra, Justin},
	year = {2020},
	note = {OCLC: 1149780943},
	keywords = {type\_publication},
	pages = {127--66},
}