Opening new patterns from new disorders: A Computational Analysis of the Poetry of Louis MacNeice
Peter Verhaar · Presses universitaires de Liège eBooks · 2021
This article discusses the results of a computational analysis of the poetry of the Northern-Irish poet Louis MacNeice. During a first stage of the study, a number of methods were developed for the automated recognition of poetic devices such as perfect rhyme, slant rhyme, semi-rhyme and alliteration. Additionally, methods have been developed for the analysis and visualisation of these data. During this study, it became clear that statistical analyses of quantitative data about instances of literary devices can reveal surprising qualities of individual works of literature. Such forms of data processing can often inspire more targeted forms of close reading. Analyses revealed, for instance, that MacNeice frequently used alliteration in poems which describe a withdrawal from a physical reality, and that poems about the loss of religion often make a heavy use of perfect rhyme. Semi-rhyme, a device in which specific masculine rhymes match the stressed syllables in a feminine rhyme, is used frequently in poems which depict a chaotic and multifaceted reality. Through examples such as these, it is shown that stylometric analyses based on data about literary devices can create new opportunities for engaging in hermeneutic interactions with poems.