Reflection #12 - Computational Stylistics: Determining which era a poem is from

Today, we learnt that computational stylistics is useful in analyzing a texts, authors, genres and periods. Computational stylistics, or stylometry, is the process of applying computational approaches to assist in the distant reading of style, so that traditional approaches to critical arguments might be supplemented with quantitative evidence. It's a case of "what it says" vs "how it says it". The former is traditionally popular when someone wants to do a research of a topic covered in a text. The latter, however, is as important, if not more, when you want to study the style of a text. I mean, we all know the way people write speak so much about them. In our writing, or even in our daily conversation, the choice of words we use are always based on a reason. We might not realize this, but there's a reason we choose to say something in one way rather than the other, which will eventually sends the same message. Let's face it, "I'm not hungry" and "I'm still full" carry two different meanings pragmatically.

Okay, back to the point. One purpose of computational stylistics is to identify the period in which a work is written and I find this interesting because now you can guess the period a literature work is written based on their style of writing. For example, if the text gets really wordy when describing nature and relies heavily on emotions, you can quickly guess that it's from the Romantic era. To quote William Wordsworth, poetry should begin with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then translate into writing. That's why if you notice, texts from Romantic era are always so beautiful in their choice of words, and really lengthy at describing landscape and nature too. To express these feelings, it was considered that the content of the art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules that dictated what a work should consist of.

Conversely, Victorian era for example, makes use of more restrained language and dwells on social concerns such as poverty. So, naturally, if you see a text dealing with this kind of topics, chances are they are from Victorian era.

The differences between Romanticism and Victorianism are apparent in the contrasting ways in which they use language. Because Romantic literature is emotionally expressive, you have to expect to see phrases such as "Oh!" to give the impression of a sudden onrush of feeling. The language in Romanticism is always so dramatic and free-flow. Meanwhile, because Victorian literature sought to document the world as it really was, it tends to use modern expressions and language, and makes less use of flowery metaphors and images. 

Below is an example of a poem. Enlarge it. If you know each era's literature characteristics, you'll know which era is this poem from: 

William Blake's The Little Girl Found