Simulating Dramatic Networks
This will be a lecture on drama that, instead of analyzing real plays, as we literary critics usually do, will discuss a series of simulations of dramatic networks. Behind this research project – which is still in process at the Stanford Literary Lab – lie two assumptions: first, that a network of Hamlet is as plausible a starting point for analysis as Shakespeare’s text itself; and, second, that simulations reveal aspects of literary form that actual works don’t allow us to understand. The argument is twice removed from literary works – plays become networks become simulations – in the hope that this double somersault will make us see something we hadn’t before.
Concretely, we establish four parameters – “centrality”, “loyalty”, “reciprocity”, and “casting” – which we “turn” more or less like one does with the knobs of a stove or of a hi-fi system: we change their settings, and this changes dramatic form in different directions. It’s really like conducting an experiment with the elements of literary structure. At the end, the outcomes are evaluated against four sets of tragic plays: by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine, and Ibsen. Whether the experiment was successful – in fact, what does “successful” even mean, in a case like this – will be for the audience to decide.
Franco Moretti
Permanent Fellow am Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Stanford University
Information on participating / attending:
Date:
11/29/2017 19:00 - 11/29/2017
Registration deadline:
11/23/2017
Event venue:
Akademiegebäude am Gendarmenmarkt, Leibniz-Saal, Markgrafenstraße 38
10117 Berlin
Berlin
Germany
Target group:
all interested persons
Email address:
Relevance:
transregional, national
Subject areas:
Cultural sciences, Information technology, Social studies
Types of events:
Presentation / colloquium / lecture
Entry:
10/20/2017
Sender/author:
Gisela Lerch
Department:
Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Event is free:
yes
Language of the text:
German
URL of this event: http://idw-online.de/en/event58737
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