How Rare are the Words that Make Up Intertexts? A Study in Latin and Greek Epic Poetry

Abstract

Among the new approaches to literary criticism made possible by the digital humanities, macroanalysis has been perhaps the most popular and powerful. Digital tools have been used with considerable success to study authorship, textual influence, and stylistics, within large individual works and across multiple works.1 In classics, macro-scale studies have begun to expand our understanding of intertextuality, further illuminating how ancient authors adapted and reused other texts. Classicists are beginning to identify large numbers of localized intertexts automatically, then look at the overall trends they contain, as exemplified by the contribution of Neil Bernstein to this volume.2 The notion of macroanalysis was developed as a digitally-enabled counterpart to microanalysis, or traditional “close reading” of individual literary passages.3 This study employs digital methods to pursue a different form of microanalysis. “Micro” refers here not to the small number of words or works considered, but rather to linguistic features not readily evident in the course of the ordinary or even intensive reading of literature.4 Through a microanalytical approach to intertextuality, we can begin to identify more robustly the formal features that make up localized intertexts. Theoretical discussions of intertextuality have long been concerned with the role of the author or reader in determining whether a particular piece of text recalled another, and so constituted an intertext. The formal study of intertextuality instead begins by studying intertexts recognized as such by scholars and studies their linguistic properties, such as