Recent Quantitative Approaches to English Language Literature

Dear Colleagues and Students,

📊📚 Recent Quantitative Approaches to English Language Literature

You are cordially invited to a talk on “Recent Quantitative Approaches to English Language Literature” organized by the English Language and Literature Research Cluster. Details of the talk are as follows:

Abstract

Much progress has recently been made in the area of computational literary studies (CLS), which can be understood as a domain application of natural language processing. However, the question remains whether quantitative methods can operationalize existing concepts, and answer standing questions, within literary studies. This presentation surveys recent progress before offering an extended example related to the recent rise of “autofiction” as a mode of English language literature. We constructed a corpus of autofictions and compared it to the CONLIT dataset using quantitative text analysis methods. Our findings indicate that English autofiction disproportionately emphasizes “perceptual encounter,” suggesting that it furthers existing trends in twenty-first-century literary expression. We further address the genre’s reputed “plotlessness” by measuring narrative “circuitousness”—a metric for what literary critics have described as “nonlinearity.” We hypothesize that specific patterns of circuitousness distinguish autofiction from adjacent forms. By combining audience-defined corpora with computational features, this study offers a quantitative description of autofiction, validating its status as a distinct, structurally unique category in contemporary literature.

About the Speaker

Jeff Clapp focuses on digital humanities, media studies, and contemporary literature in English in the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong.

Yours Sincerely,

Department of Literature and Cultural Studies