Abstract
In recent years, a new method to study narrative texts was introduced, using network analysis. The approach is original and adventurous; instead of focusing on the literary or narrative bases of the texts, it involves extracting data for a formalised analysis of network structures. These are determined from descriptions of events in the texts and their statistical properties are studied using standard network-analysis tools. In this way comparisons between chronologically and geographically different texts are possible. Furthermore, we can compare these textual networks with real social networks, studied by modern sociologists or, indeed, fictional ones. These studies have clearly shown that social-network analysis forms an effective bridge between very different disciplines. It can connect scientists and humanists in joint research; it can depict old research questions in a new light and connect different phenomena belonging to the worlds of nature and culture. The key to this bridge is the understanding of complex systems and their emergent properties. But we are still in the very beginning of exploring these issues and in developing an adequate methodology as we seek to incorporate a number of tools recently developed. Here we attempt to cross the bridge from the humanities side. To this end, we present the results of two studies of medieval sources. Our focus is on visualisation and interpretation of local network properties, an approach which is complementary to complexity analyses. We show that the method can offer powerful augmentation to traditional approaches to the humanities and we outline ways in which these can be developed for the future.
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Notes
- 1.
The Lives of Cuthbert, texts (i) and (ii), are accessible in Latin and English in the volume, Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Colgrave 1940). The Life of Ceolfrith (iii) and the History of the Abbots (iv) are available in Latin and English in Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Wood and Grocock 2013). Bede’s Life of Cuthbert (ii) and the two texts about Wearmouth-Jarrow, (iii) and (iv), are also translated in the collection The Age of Bede (Farmer and Webb 1998). Thanks to Peter Darby, Julia Hillner, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, and the members of the University of Sheffield's Late Antiquity Reading Group for their comments on an early draft of this section.
- 2.
- 3.
For discussion of the genre of history (often referred to by its Latin name: historia), which has its roots in Classical Antiquity, see the essay collection: Deliyannis (2003).
- 4.
For the differences between history and hagiography, see Fouracre (1990).
- 5.
- 6.
For further information about the relationship between Bede’s History of the Abbots and the anonymous account of Ceolfrith, and the early history of Wearmouth and Jarrow, see Wood and Grocock’s lengthy introduction and consult their extensive bibliography for further material (2013).
- 7.
Historiam abbatum monasterii huius, in quo supernae pietati deseruire gaudeo, Benedicti, Ceolfridi et Huaetbercti, in libellis duobus (Colgrave and Mynors 1999: 570).
- 8.
Bede’s History of the Abbots has 23 individual characters, one of which represents a group (the unnamed disciples of Pope Gregory I).
- 9.
- 10.
Whitby was a famous double-monastery, for both monks and nuns, and traditionally ruled by an abbess; it is thought to have been the location of the famous Synod of Whitby, held in AD 664, to determine the method of calculating Easter in the Northumbrian Church; it was a burial place for several members of the Northumbrian aristocracy; and a centre of education and literary production: see Johnson (1993), Thacker (1998), and Lapidge (1999: 472–473).
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Gramsch, R., MacCarron, M., MacCarron, P., Yose, J. (2017). Medieval Historical, Hagiographical and Biographical Networks. In: Kenna, R., MacCarron, M., MacCarron, P. (eds) Maths Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient Narratives. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39445-9_4
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