Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetry

Distant reading promises access to "the great unread", which should allow scholars to rethink the history of literature. However, the rise in volume of data does not guarantee the understanding of a corpus and its relation to the literary population. This article discusses how a "com...

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Main Author: Antonina Martynenko
Format: Article
Language:Spanish
Published: Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2023-07-01
Series:Literatura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/lthc/article/view/108775
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author Antonina Martynenko
author_facet Antonina Martynenko
author_sort Antonina Martynenko
collection DOAJ
description Distant reading promises access to "the great unread", which should allow scholars to rethink the history of literature. However, the rise in volume of data does not guarantee the understanding of a corpus and its relation to the literary population. This article discusses how a "complete" corpus of the 19th-century poetry books in Russian might be collected with account for historical data and potential survivorship bias. Even if bibliographical sources cannot provide a complete list of books printed in a given period, the amount of "incompleteness" can be directly estimated with the unseen species models. The estimation of survival ratios for printed poetry shows differences in the loss rate across different types of sources: with conventional editions, like books and anthologies, are well-preserved, while booklets and pamphlets are the largest expected source of loss. These findings allow us to estimate what an "exhaustive" corpus can look like and define the features of "the unread" and "unseen" inside it.
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publishDate 2023-07-01
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series Literatura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica
spelling doaj-art-22de45d668204bf08343c9c620bf7db22025-08-20T01:53:10ZspaUniversidad Nacional de ColombiaLiteratura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica0123-59312256-54502023-07-0125210.15446/lthc.v25n2.108775Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetryAntonina Martynenko0University of Tartu Distant reading promises access to "the great unread", which should allow scholars to rethink the history of literature. However, the rise in volume of data does not guarantee the understanding of a corpus and its relation to the literary population. This article discusses how a "complete" corpus of the 19th-century poetry books in Russian might be collected with account for historical data and potential survivorship bias. Even if bibliographical sources cannot provide a complete list of books printed in a given period, the amount of "incompleteness" can be directly estimated with the unseen species models. The estimation of survival ratios for printed poetry shows differences in the loss rate across different types of sources: with conventional editions, like books and anthologies, are well-preserved, while booklets and pamphlets are the largest expected source of loss. These findings allow us to estimate what an "exhaustive" corpus can look like and define the features of "the unread" and "unseen" inside it. https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/lthc/article/view/108775Unseen species problemcomputational humanitiespoetic corpus19th century literaturebibliographybook history
spellingShingle Antonina Martynenko
Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetry
Literatura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica
Unseen species problem
computational humanities
poetic corpus
19th century literature
bibliography
book history
title Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetry
title_full Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetry
title_fullStr Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetry
title_full_unstemmed Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetry
title_short Unread, yet preserved: A case study on survival of the 19th-century printed poetry
title_sort unread yet preserved a case study on survival of the 19th century printed poetry
topic Unseen species problem
computational humanities
poetic corpus
19th century literature
bibliography
book history
url https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/lthc/article/view/108775
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