Centro Studi comparati “I Deug-Su”
(Università di Siena
Dip. Filologia e critica delle letterature antiche e moderne)
Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale

The Mechanic Reader:
Digital Methods of Literary Criticism

Siena, Certosa di Pontignano, 12-13 June 2015

"the unprecedented empirical power of digital tools and archives offers a unique chance to rethink the categories of literary study" (F. Moretti, Operationalizing, dec. 2013)

One of the recent evolutions of literary criticism concerns the application of computing approaches to the analysis of texts, which helps foreground features usually invisibles to traditional reading. This approach is also able to process massive quantities of text that are not manageable by way of a traditional human reading. Following this direction, Franco Moretti, Matt Jokers and the Stanford Literary Lab have developed a provocative concept of “distant” access to texts, which sets aside the expectation of direct knowledge and close reading, emphasizing instead a globalizing view of world literature. Such an approach on one side raised a lively debate, and on another side has been popularized even outside the professional scholarship, as testified by the permanent column which the New York Times has dedicated to it in its literary supplement. (further mirrored in the virtual maps published every Sunday in Italy by the Corriere della Sera). Other scholars, even in fields different from literary history and the study of textuality, be they focused on Latin or English, Chinese or Italian literature, adopt similar methods to attempt a microscopic reading of the literary work, by analyzing its linguistic layers and stylistic phenomena usually invisible to a conventional philological or stylistic reading.

These newer analytic techniques, as well as the methodological changes that digital tools have brought about in the literary production and criticism, will be the focus of the seminar entitled "The Mechanic Muse," to be held in Siena between June 12 and 13, 2015. The seminar, the first organized in Italy on this topic, will include papers on classic, medieval and modern literatures, a round table on F. Moretti’s 2013 Distant Reading, as well asa presentation of the John Benjamins CHLEL series volume New Literary Hybrids in the Age of Multimedia Expression: Crossing Borders, Crossing genres, ed. by Marcel Cornis-Pope (2014), and of the 2014 issue of the journal Between on Tecnologia, Immaginazione e forme del narrare, ed. by Lucia Esposito, Emanuela Piga, Alessandra Ruggiero. The proceedings of the conference will be published in the issue LIII (2015/2) of Semicerchio. Rivista di poesia comparata.

Topics: Reading automata, Digital reading network, Computational Models of Narrative, Computer-based analysis of literary texts, Quantitative Literary History, Distant Reading , Authorship detection and literary criticism, Transmedia criticism.

Board: Marcel Cornis-Pope (Virginia Commonwealth Univ., Head of CHLEL), Fabio Ciotti (Univ. “Sapienza” Roma, President of AIUCD and member of TEI boards), Emanuela Piga (Univ. di Sassari, ed. of Between), Francesco Stella (Univ. Siena, AIUCD and CHLEL member, editor of Semicerchio)

Digital Methods
for Literary Criticism

Siena, Certosa di Pontignano, 12-13 June 2015

June 12, Friday, Certosa di Pontignano, Sala Palio

9.30 Institutional Welcome

FRANCESCO STELLA(Siena)

9.45 Methods (Chair: Fabio Ciotti)

SIMON ROWBERRY (Stirling)

Reading automata

ANTONIO LIETO (Torino)

Steps Towards Cognitive Narrative Machines

SIMONE CELANI (Roma)

Dai Sistemi Artificiali Adattivi alla critica letteraria: un caso di studio

10.50 Coffee Break

11.10 Classics. Chair: Luca Graverini (Siena)

THIBAULT CLÉRICE (Leipzig - by Skype connection)

Learning about word senses in Latin using distant reading

PAOLO MASTANDREA (Venezia)

Poesia latina arcaica e repubblicana in testi altomedievali

12.00 Round table. Chair: Riccardo Castellana

New Literary Hybrids in the Age of Multimedia Expression

MARCEL CORNIS-POPE (Richmond, Virginia),

MARGARET HIGONNET (Storrs, Connecticut)

MARK SANDBERG (Berkeley, CA)

13.00 Lunch

_______________________________________________________________________________

15.00 Middle Ages (Chair: Francesco Stella)

CLAUDIA BOSCOLO (London)

Computer-based analysis of the Entrée d'Espagne

through FIOLA (Franco-Italian Online Archive

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE (Rouen)

Digital methods of literary criticism:

an example of use in Marco Polo’s travels

16.00

Round table. About Franco Moretti’s “Distant reading”

Chair: Guido Mazzoni (Siena)

GIORGIO GUZZETTA (Cork) - FABIO CIOTTI (Roma)

17.20 Break

17.40-18.30 Semantics & Rhetorics (Chair: tbd)

SILVIA STOYANOVA (Trier)

A digital research platform for the semantic reconstruction
of Giacomo Leopardi’s “Zibaldone”

TIZIANA MANCINELLI (Reading)

An ontology for digital rhetoric analysis.
A case study: Attilio Bertolucci's La camera da letto

______________________________________________________________________-

Saturday 13, Certosa di Pontignano, Sala Palio

9.30Methods (Chair: Cesare Zanca, Siena)

BRONWEN THOMAS (Bournemouth)

Digital reading

RICCARDO CASTELLANA (Siena)

Biofiction, Documentality and the Internet:

Metamorphoses of a Literary Genre

EMANUELA PATTI (London)

Narrative Experimentalism in the Digital Age

10.40 Coffee break

11.00 Moderns (Chair: Marcel Cornis-Pope)

PAOLA ITALIA (Roma)

Manzoni's electronic interpretations

12.00 Round Table. «Between»’s 2014 issue on

Tecnologia, Immaginazione e forme del narrare.

Chair Niccolò Scaffai (Lausanne)

LUCIA ESPOSITO (Teramo) – EMANUELA PIGA (Bologna) -

ALESSANDRA RUGGIERO (Teramo)

13.00

FABIO CIOTTI(Roma, AIUCD)

Closing address
_____________________________________________________

Segreteria: centrostudicomparati@libero.it

Certosa: 05771521104; Dipartimento: 0577234838
Org.: Elisabetta Bartoli

Comitato scientifico:
Fabio Ciotti, Marcel Cornis-Pope,
Emanuela Piga, Francesco Stella

____________________________________________________________________
Work materials:

ABSTRACTS
Stoyanova Presentation
Mastandrea

LINKS:
1) Between 2015 issue "Tecnologia, Immaginazione, Forme del narrare" http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/index

2) Computer-based analysis of drama and its uses for literary criticism and historiography", 12-13/03 2015: proceedings http://comedy.hypotheses.or/

3) Marilyn Deegan - Kathryn Sutherland, Transferred Illusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754670162

4) Simone Celani, Archeosema

5) LitLat Stanford https://litlab.stanford.edu/

6) Stoyanova's slides

Rosselli del Turco

Morlock

Stella

The Mechanic Reader:
Digital Methods of Literary Criticism

Digital Methods
for Literary Criticism

Siena, Certosa di Pontignano, 12-13 June 2015

Reading automata

Steps Towards Cognitive Narrative Machines

Learning about word senses in Latin using distant reading

Round table. About Franco Moretti’s “Distant reading”

17.20 Break

17.40-18.30 Semantics & Rhetorics (Chair: tbd)

Closing address
_____________________________________________________

Segreteria: centrostudicomparati@libero.it

Certosa: 05771521104; Dipartimento: 0577234838
Org.: Elisabetta Bartoli

Comitato scientifico:
Fabio Ciotti, Marcel Cornis-Pope,
Emanuela Piga, Francesco Stella

Omaggio a Séamus Heaney

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli

Rosselli del Turco

Morlock

Stella

The Mechanic Reader:Digital Methods of Literary Criticism

Digital Methods for Literary Criticism

Siena, Certosa di Pontignano, 12-13 June 2015

Reading automata

Steps Towards Cognitive Narrative Machines

Learning about word senses in Latin using distant reading

Round table. About Franco Moretti’s “Distant reading”

17.20 Break

17.40-18.30 Semantics & Rhetorics (Chair: tbd)

Closing address_____________________________________________________Segreteria: centrostudicomparati@libero.itCertosa: 05771521104; Dipartimento: 0577234838Org.: Elisabetta BartoliComitato scientifico:Fabio Ciotti, Marcel Cornis-Pope, Emanuela Piga, Francesco Stella

Omaggio a Séamus Heaney

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli

The Mechanic Reader:
Digital Methods of Literary Criticism

Digital Methods
for Literary Criticism

Closing address
_____________________________________________________

Segreteria: centrostudicomparati@libero.it

Certosa: 05771521104; Dipartimento: 0577234838
Org.: Elisabetta Bartoli

Comitato scientifico:
Fabio Ciotti, Marcel Cornis-Pope,
Emanuela Piga, Francesco Stella