Popular Voices: Computational Analysis of Poetry and Song
This edited volume brings together contributions focused on the computational analysis of popular poetic forms, both traditional and contemporary, as well as song lyrics (for instance in folk, pop, or rap), and other studies on poetic text following a quantitative or computational approach. Particular attention is given to the relationships between text and performance, and to poetic expression disseminated through new media platforms such as the social web. Through the diversity of materials addressed, ranging from German Romantic poetry to Estonian hip-hop, and from Icelandic verse to Bukowski’s performances, the contributions share and offer an understanding of poetry as a complex phenomenon that exceeds the boundaries of print, unfolding across multiple media, traditions, and reception contexts. Collectively, the papers demonstrate how digital humanities approaches enable novel forms of analysis, showing that quantitative methods do not flatten poetic texts into abstract data nor disregard their aesthetic dimensions. Rather, processes of formalization, from basic counting procedures to advanced algorithmic modeling, provide productive means to analyze, describe, interpret, and access poetic works in ways that both complement and expand established scholarly practices.
Editors:
Mari Väina (Estonian Literary Museum
Maria-Kristiina Lotman (University of Tartu)
Anne-Sophie Bories (University of Basel)
Pablo Ruiz Fabo (University of Strasbourg)
Petr Plecháč (Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
Susanna Mett (University of Tartu)
Each paper in this volume has undergone a single-blind peer review. We are grateful to scholars from the following institutions for their kind help with the review process: Czech Academy of Sciences (CS); Imperial College London (GB); University of Helsinki (FI); University of Iceland (IS); University of Lausanne (CH); University of Strasbourg (FR); University of Tartu (EE); University of Turin (IT).
