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Love, Sex, Shakespeare and Data Analysis
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:59:40 -0400
On a lighter note. I came across this rather interesting piece that is in some ways tangential and in other ways quite relevant to our discussion. The piece is Parsing is Such Sweet Sorrow by Emma Pierson
(http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/parsing-is-such-sweet-sorrow/). She is looking at how we might use computer textual analysis to better conceptualize stories, in this case, Shakespeare's plays. As is common in such endeavors, the effort comes up with some interesting insights while at the same time revealing some of the severe limits to such an approach. But it also profiles the entire complexity of our topic.
"More than 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it, we can now say that "Romeo and Juliet" has the wrong name. Perhaps the play should be called "Juliet and Her Nurse," which isn't nearly as sexy, or "Romeo and Benvolio," which has a whole different connotation."
I think it is neat Pierson used Shakespeare whose works have been much mined for bawdy jokes and subtle (or not) allusions to carnal relations. Pierson's analysis begins to shed some light on the distinctions between romantic love, carnal love, communication between genders, social context communication, homophily, network theory, etc.
It is kind of interesting that our entire conversation has been about front list contemporary books when sex, raunchy, romantic, bawdy, allusive, complicated, or otherwise is in everything from Gilgamesh, the Bible, Chaucer, Shakespeare and onwards. The desire for sex (literary or otherwise) is obviously age old. Until the last fifty years, as a young scholar, you had to find it in the classics. There's an incentive to polish up your Greek and Roman declensions. Makes you wonder if easy availability of sex in contemporary literature isn't a contributor to the decline in kids learning Greek and Latin.
Make sure you click through on the interactive visualization link Pierson includes. Take a look at the comments section as well. Some interesting commentary there, particularly about the likely influence of constraints on the nature of the plays. Of course there are also the requisite pedants, posers and trolls.
Charles
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Received on Fri 21 Mar 2014 01:00:26 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:59:40 -0400
On a lighter note. I came across this rather interesting piece that is in some ways tangential and in other ways quite relevant to our discussion. The piece is Parsing is Such Sweet Sorrow by Emma Pierson
(http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/parsing-is-such-sweet-sorrow/). She is looking at how we might use computer textual analysis to better conceptualize stories, in this case, Shakespeare's plays. As is common in such endeavors, the effort comes up with some interesting insights while at the same time revealing some of the severe limits to such an approach. But it also profiles the entire complexity of our topic.
"More than 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it, we can now say that "Romeo and Juliet" has the wrong name. Perhaps the play should be called "Juliet and Her Nurse," which isn't nearly as sexy, or "Romeo and Benvolio," which has a whole different connotation."
I think it is neat Pierson used Shakespeare whose works have been much mined for bawdy jokes and subtle (or not) allusions to carnal relations. Pierson's analysis begins to shed some light on the distinctions between romantic love, carnal love, communication between genders, social context communication, homophily, network theory, etc.
It is kind of interesting that our entire conversation has been about front list contemporary books when sex, raunchy, romantic, bawdy, allusive, complicated, or otherwise is in everything from Gilgamesh, the Bible, Chaucer, Shakespeare and onwards. The desire for sex (literary or otherwise) is obviously age old. Until the last fifty years, as a young scholar, you had to find it in the classics. There's an incentive to polish up your Greek and Roman declensions. Makes you wonder if easy availability of sex in contemporary literature isn't a contributor to the decline in kids learning Greek and Latin.
Make sure you click through on the interactive visualization link Pierson includes. Take a look at the comments section as well. Some interesting commentary there, particularly about the likely influence of constraints on the nature of the plays. Of course there are also the requisite pedants, posers and trolls.
Charles
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Received on Fri 21 Mar 2014 01:00:26 PM CDT
