Depiction of Jews in Classical Russian Literature

Prebor, Gila; Nirenberg, Yigal

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117351 Copy

Description

Title

Depiction of Jews in Classical Russian Literature

Author(s)

• Prebor, Gila
• Nirenberg, Yigal

Issue Date

2023-03-13

Keyword(s)

• Sentiment analysis
• Topical modeling
• Distance reading
• Text analysis

Abstract

Depiction of Jewish characters in nineteenth century Russian literature has occupied the attention of numerous literary scholars and intellectuals throughout the years. Many attempts were made to tackle with the views of some of the greatest writers the world has known. Unlike other works in this field, that placed emphasis on providing examples as proof or disproof of alleged antisemitism, in this inquiry we are attempting to quantitively and visually show the extent of preoccupation by the various writers with Jews. For this purpose, we have utilized various tools commonly used by researchers in the field of Digital Humanities for Distant Reading, e.g., Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis in conjunction with Close Reading, the traditional method of analyzing texts. With 72% of all sentences in corpus classified as Negative and main topics suggesting Financial/Religious/Nationalistic motifs, there is a clear correlation between the definition of antisemitism as it was known in nineteenth century and the depiction of Jewish characters by the various writers of the era.

Publisher

iSchools

Series/Report Name or Number

iConference 2023 Proceedings

Type of Resource

Other

Language

eng

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117351

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2023 is held by Gila Prebor and Yigal Nirenberg. Copyright permissions, when appropriate, must be obtained directly from the authors.

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