DIGHUM Talk: Artjoms Šela

Artjoms Šeļa (Institute of the Polish Language) "Hexameters, genres and geniuses: formal approaches to the relationship between poetic meter and meaning in European verse" (Jakobi 2 – 427 ja Zoom)

Abstract

Recent advances in cultural analytics and computational studies of art, literature and film often show that long-term change in artistic works happens gradually. These findings suggest that conservative forces that shape creative domains are often underestimated. The talk will demonstrate how this conservative retention of features happens in European poetic traditions (Czech, Dutch, English, German, Russian) by computationally addressing the problem of "semantic halo of meter" --- a theorized relationship between poetic form and its meaning. Using topic modeling and a series of clustering and classification analyses it is possible to trace the effect of semantic halo across all accentual-syllabic traditions under question. The talk will focus on the potential mechanisms behind the observed effect and use simple agent-based models to show how cultural transmission, symbolic inequality and structural differences might be responsible for the long-lasting power of poetic forms to shape meaning and retain genre memory for hundreds of years.

Bio
Artjoms Šeļa is currently doing postdoctoral research at the Methodology department of the Institute of Polish Language (PAN, Kraków) and is a research fellow at the University of Tartu. He holds PhD in Russian Literature and uses computational methods to understand historical change in literature and culture. His main research interests include stylometry, verse studies and cultural evolution. Sometimes he forays into digital preservation and the history of quantitative methods in humanities