Computational Analysis of a Literary Work in the Context of Its Spatiality

Abstract

Spatiality is a term used to describe the attributes of a given space, its various cultural identities in an established time, differentiated from the notion of territoriality. While territoriality is naturally bound by the established limits of the national territory of a state, spatiality overcomes geographical distinctions and focuses on the identity or identities of a space defined solely on the basis of its “cultural territory”, unlimited by international territorial boundaries. On the example of a literary work, the spatial elements used to achieve such a definition of space can be investigated through the adoperation of words that form the motives of such a work. The frequent use of topoi of the space defined in a literary work establishes the rhythm of its narrative. The authors of this paper shall make a computational qualitative and quantitative corpus analysis of a literary work that thematizes an urban identity in the context of its space and time. The literary method of repeating the topoi of a city, or simply its name and all other types of words derived from its lexical root will be analyzed with natural language processing techniques that will expose the aforementioned method with mathematical precision. The results of this analysis will afterwards be interpreted in a way that it is possible to exemplify how those words, used for the literary method of establishing spatial elements in the analyzed literary work and the rhythm of its narrative, help achieve a sense of spatiality and a singular united cultural identification of an extraterritorial space by its literary inhabitants.