The Network Shape of the Russian Novel: A Computational Analysis

Mercoledì 3 settembre, in aula T28 e online su Microsoft Teams, si terrà la lezione di Yuliya Ilchuk, dal titolo The Network Shape of the Russian Novel: A Computational Analysis.

The Russian novel has been traditionally regarded as the novel of ideas, in which the conflicting views on the national identity and Russia’s relationship with the “other” are presented in the dramatized narrative. After Mikhail Bakhitn’s pioneering ideas of dialogism and polyphony of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels it became especially common to view the novel as a balanced dramatization of conflicts among polar opposites. In dr. Ilchuk’s ongoing research project on the network analysis of Russian realist and modernist novels, she approaches the character networks as models of an emerging liberal societywhich, on the one hand, captured the socio-political trends of the time and, on the other, provided Russian society with ideas how to shape a horizontal, heterarchical structure of social structure. In her talk, she will share the network analysis of the major Russian novels, which integrates computational analysis of the network systems with literary analysis of the character-space, and theorization of sociality in social sciences.