Quantifying & visualizing literature

If there's one thing I've discovered about Digital Humanities, it's that there is a vast amount of material to analyze. For example, using the Voyant reading tools revealed to me just how much information can be gleaned with data mining. Entering the text for one of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories revealed all sorts of statistics, ranging from the most repeated phrases and where they occurred in the story, to the reading index level. This application demonstrated how useful data mining could be. Personally, I think it would be a great feature for a writer to use. Having the ability to assess whether the language of a novel fits the targeted audience, or being able to determine whether or not sentences are too lengthy, would be helpful. I could definitely see how it would benefit students as well. There is a lot of insight you can gain in detecting important information from a story without having to search in depth for it. I think it would be an advantageous opportunity to be able to conduct research, although at a certain point, only scholars would really utilize the data.

Using the Voyant tools, I discovered several things about my Poe story. First, the document had 793 unique word forms. It also had 11.8 words per sentence, and a vocabulary index of 0.339. Finally, it showed where key phrases and terms occurred. It was an interesting way for me to discern more about the story.

Comments

  1. NataliaOctober 3, 2022 at 1:41 PM

    Hello, I liked that you described the information that voyant tools provided as statistics. I also believe that voyant tools is a good tool for writers and students. I enjoyed that you talked about how you are able to see the sentences length and vocabulary index as well.

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  2. KaitOctober 4, 2022 at 2:05 PM

    I like that voyant can show us details of stories like the key phrases and terms. You used the word "advantageous" and I agree with that. When analyzing works it's nice to be able to have these visuals to use to help point out or prove a point you are making which gives a writer an advantage to use.

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