Virtual Reading: The Prospero Project Redux

33 Pages Posted: 2 Oct 2017

Date Written: September 12, 2017

Abstract

Virtual reading is proposed as a computational strategy for investigating the structure of literary texts. A computer ‘reads’ a text by moving a window N-words wide through the text from beginning to end and follows the trajectory that window traces through a high-dimensional semantic space computed for the language used in the text. That space is created by using contemporary corpus-based machine learning techniques. Virtual reading is compared and contrasted with a 40 year old proposal grounded in the symbolic computation systems of the mid-1970s. High-dimensional mathematical spaces are contrasted with the standard spatial imagery employed in literary criticism (inside and outside the text, etc.). The “manual” descriptive skills of experienced literary critics, however, are essential to virtual reading, both for purposes of calibration and adjustment of the model, and for motivating low-dimensional projection of results. Examples considered: Heart of Darkness, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, The Winter’s Tale.

Keywords: digital humanities, computational criticism, machine learning, symbolic computation, cognition, AI, computational linguistics

Suggested Citation

Benzon, William L., Virtual Reading: The Prospero Project Redux (September 12, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3036076 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3036076

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