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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America
Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng
Aspects Of Character: Quantitative Evidence And Fictional People, Jonathan Cheng
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
“Aspects of Character” uses quantitative evidence to trace new timelines in the literary history of characterization. The guiding premise of this work is that digital libraries and mathematical perspectives can shed new light on the practices used to configure fictional people. Using texts from the nineteenth to twenty-first century, this dissertation analyzes how different aspects of characters have transformed throughout history, coordinating quantitative experiments with the critical perspectives of literary scholars. This project begins by analyzing the characterization used in works of fiction that were reviewed by prestigious publications. This first experiment pushes back on a historical truism about “well-crafted” …
Living Lore: B. A. Botkin, Folklore, And The State, Kirby Little
Living Lore: B. A. Botkin, Folklore, And The State, Kirby Little
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
This digital project explores government surveillance and political action through folklore. The project focuses on the unpublished essay of folklorist Benjamin Botkin titled “Progress: Negroes and Everybody, From Folk Tale to Science Fiction.” Botkin was a prominent academic in his field, and created the theoretical approach to folklore he termed “applied folklore.” Botkin’s approach to folklore gained considerable attention, both positive and negative, due to his unique emphasis on the present time and the ever-changing nature of folklore, and his politicization of folklore as a method for uniting working class citizens. For decades, Botkin was under clandestine surveillance by the …