The Longue Durée of Literary Prestige

Underwood, Ted; Sellers, Jordan

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/95003 Copy

Description

Title

The Longue Durée of Literary Prestige

Author(s)

• Underwood, Ted
• Sellers, Jordan

Issue Date

2016

Keyword(s)

literary reviewing, distant reading, poetic diction, literary prestige, longue durée

Abstract

A history of literary prestige needs to study both works that achieved distinction and the mass of volumes from which they were distinguished. To understand how those patterns of preference changed across a century, we gathered two samples of English-language poetry from the period 1820–1919: one drawn from volumes reviewed in prominent periodicals and one selected at random from a large digital library (in which the majority of authors are relatively obscure). The stylistic differences associated with literary prominence turn out to be quite stable: a statistical model trained to distinguish reviewed from random volumes in any quarter of this century can make predictions almost as accurate about the rest of the period. The “poetic revolutions” described by many histories are not visible in this model; instead, there is a steady tendency for new volumes of poetry to change by slightly exaggerating certain features that defined prestige in the recent past.

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95003

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-3570634

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