Validating Literary Theories Using Automatic Social Network Extraction

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate whether longstanding literary theories about nineteenth-century British novels can be verified using computational techniques. Elson et al. (2010) previously introduced the task of computationally validating such theories, extracting conversational networks from literary texts. Revisiting their work, we conduct a closer reading of the theories themselves, present a revised and expanded set of hypotheses based on a divergent interpretation of the theories, and widen the scope of networks for validating this expanded set of hypotheses.