What is a protagonist? : A computationally assisted analysis of the character centrality of Cleopatra and Sophonisbe in early modern French drama

Abstract

Early modern French dramas c.1550–1660 stage a multitude of female figures. Two of the most popular were the Greek-Egyptian ruler Cleopatra and the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisbe who all in all appear in no less than 13 French tragedies from this period including some of the period's most important ones. In this article we undertake the first comparative and structural investigation of both figures' importance within the corpus by combining computationally assisted social network analysis and traditional close reading. By defining importance quantitatively based on four centrality measurements, we substantiate recent scholarship's highlighting of early modern dramatists' gendered interest and question traditional scholarly notions of protagonism.