Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 391.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2025-03-07 15:58:31+00:00
        From: James Rovira <jamesrovira@gmail.com>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.390: pubs: on computational literary criticism & a conversation with Claude 3.7

I'm sorry, but the description of literary analysis below is ridiculously
reductive and seems to ignore the work that criticism has been doing since
at least the 1970s. It sounds frankly ignorant, especially in the field of
poetics, which in my opinion involves the closest reading of human writing
possible.

Furthermore, analysis provided by Large Language Models cannot by their
nature be any kind of a substitute for a close reading of a text, much less
a substitute for the variety of kinds of criticism made possible under the
heading of "literary theory." I don't trust LLMs to manage polysemy unless
individual words are coded separately for different senses or definitions
of the same word, much less for multiple definitions operating at the same
time in the same instance of use. My impression is that LLMs would flatten
the meaning of texts rather than open them up unless some kind of close
reading work is done ahead of time to account for polysemy.

But that kind of work would pre-interpret the text behind the scenes
without explanation.

Rather than trying to replace theoretical approaches with LLMs, it might be
more productive to think in terms of the kinds of interpretive work that is
possible with LLMs -- in terms of value added.

Jim R

On Fri, Mar 7, 2025 at 1:45 AM Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:

>
>               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 390.
>         Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>                       Hosted by DH-Cologne
>                        www.dhhumanist.org
>                 Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
>         Date: 2025-03-06 09:28:32+00:00
>         From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com>
>         Subject: Computation, Text, and Form in Literary Criticism: A
> Conversation with Claude 3.7
>
> That’s the title of a paper I recently posted. Here’s the abstract:
>
> Abstract: Literary criticism operates with contradictory definitions of
> “text,”
> rarely meaning simply the marks on a page. This makes it difficult to
> establish
> what “form” means. While critics do analyze features like rhyme and meter,
> or
> the distinction between story (fabula) and plot (syuzhet) criticism rarely
> seeks
> to understand how words are arranged in texts beyond these basics. Literary
> criticism selectively borrowed from Lévi-Strauss's structural analysis of
> myth
> (e.g. the concept of binary oppositions), it ignored a systematic
> methodology
> that was essentially computational in nature and about form. Now, Large
> Language
> Models present a watershed moment for literary studies - they're
> unavoidable and
> demonstrate sophisticated capabilities. A cohort of younger scholars using
> corpus linguistics and computational methods may represent a bridge between
> computational and literary approaches. Will these scholars extend
> computational
> thinking from method to theory? - using computation not just as an
> analytical
> tool but as a framework for understanding how literary texts function –
> that’s a
> key issue currently before the discipline.
>
> You can download it here:
>
> Academia.edu:
>
> https://www.academia.edu/128029987/Computation_Text_and_Form_in_Literary_Criti
cism_A_Conversation_with_Claude_3_7
> SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5166930
> ResearchGate:
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389591524_Computation_Tex
> t_and_Form_in_Literary_Criticism_A_Conversation_with_Claude_37
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389591524_Computation_Text_and_Form_
in_Literary_Criticism_A_Conversation_with_Claude_37>
>
>
>
> William Benzon
> bbenzon@mindspring.com
> 917.717.9841


--
Dr. James Rovira <http://www.jamesrovira.com/>

   - *David Bowie and Romanticism
   <https://jamesrovira.com/2022/09/02/david-bowie-and-romanticism/>*,
   Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
   - *Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism
   <https://www.routledge.com/Women-in-Rock-Women-in-Romanticism-The-
Emancipation-of-Female-Will/Rovira/p/book/9781032069845>*,
   Routledge, 2023


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