In your eyes: identifying cliches in song lyrics

We investigated methods for the discovery of cliches from song lyrics. Trigrams and rhyme features were extracted from a collection of lyrics and ranked using term-weighting techniques such as tf-idf. These attributes were also examined over both time and genre. We present an application to produce a cliche score for lyrics based on these findings and show that number one hits are substantially more cliched than the average published song

Rhyme, Rhythm, and Rhubarb: Using Probabilistic Methods to Analyze Hip Hop, Poetry, and Misheard Lyrics

While text Information Retrieval applications often focus on extracting semantic features to identify the topic of a document, and Music Information Research tends to deal with melodic, timbral or meta-tagged data of songs, useful information can be gained from surface-level features of musical texts as well. This is especially true for texts such as song lyrics and poetry, in which the sound and structure of the words is important. These types of lyrical verse usually contain regular and repetitive patterns, like the rhymes in rap lyrics or the meter in metrical poetry. The existence of such patterns is not always categorical, as there may be a degree to which they appear or apply in any sample of text. For example, rhymes in hip hop are often imperfect and vary in the degree to which their constituent parts differ. Although a definitive decision as to the existence of any such feature cannot always be made, large corpora of known examples can be used to train probabilistic models enumerating the likelihood of their appearance. In this thesis, we apply likelihood-based methods to identify and characterize patterns in lyrical verse. We use a probabilistic model of mishearing in music to resolve misheard lyric search queries. We then apply a probabilistic model of rhyme to detect imperfect and internal rhymes in rap lyrics and quantitatively characterize rappers' styles in their use. Finally, we compute likelihoods of prosodic stress in words to perform automated scansion of poetry and compare poets' usage of and adherence to meter. In these applications, we find that likelihood-based methods outperform simpler, rule-based models at finding and quantifying lyrical features in text

Finding `Lucy in disguise': the misheard lyric matching problem

We investigated methods for music information retrieval systems where the search term is a portion of a misheard lyric. Lyric data presents its own unique challenges that are different to related problems such as name search. We compared three techniques, each configured for local rather than global matching: edit distance, Editex, and SAPSL - a technique derived from Syllable Alignment Pattern Searching. Each technique was selected based on effectiveness at approximate pattern matching in related fields. Local edit distance and Editex performed comparably as evaluated with mean average precision and mean reciprocal rank. SAPS-L's effectiveness varied between measures

The Lonely Nineties: Visions of Community on Television between the End of the Cold War and 9/11

“The Lonely Nineties” provides a close reading of six popular series on primetime American television in the 1990s, setting their depictions of community within the context of late 20th century problems and developments in civic disengagement. This dissertation examines Seinfeld, N.Y.P.D. Blue, Law & Order, The X-Files, Touched by an Angel, and The Simpsons within their respective genres, revealing what makes nineties television distinctive, and connecting those distinctions to related developments in American social and cultural history. In the final decade when the medium still offered regularly a simultaneous experience of mass culture, television imagined communities in various states of fragmentation just as America, itself, was grappling with a fragmented age

The Liminality of Autofiction: Deep and Dark Play in the Search for the Writing Self

This is a work of practice-led research examining autofiction as a charged middle-ground with the potential to offer more expansive access to the writing self than either memoir or fiction. The creative work comprises a metafictional and metaleptic novel about an author called Tasha writing about another author called Harry, who is herself writing about a character called Natalie. Through an examination of the relationships between these three characters, the work hopes to raise questions about the purpose, ethics, and limits of writing about the self. The accompanying critical commentary examines the question of why writers write autofiction, positing its liminality and self-referentiality as particularly fertile grounds for the examination not just of the self, but specifically the writing self. It asks whether autofiction can be used (by both readers and writers) to access psychological and emotional truths that cannot be found in either memoirs or novels. This question has been personally pressing in terms of my own practice, but is also potentially key to understanding the current popularity and critical reception of English-language autofictions, especially by female authors

Writing Marlowe as writing Shakespeare

This thesis consists of two components: a 70,000-word verse novel and a 50,000-word critical component that has arisen out of the research process for that novel. Creative Component: The Marlowe Papers The Marlowe Papers is a full-length verse novel written entirely in iambic pentameter. As with verse novels such as The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth, or The Emperor’s Babe by Bernadine Evaristo, its inspiration, derivation, conventions and scope owe more to the prose novel than to the epic poem. Though there is as yet no widely-accepted definition, a verse novel may be distinguished from an epic poem where it consists, as in this case, of numerous discrete poems, each constituting a ‘chapter’ of the novel. This conception allows for considerable variations in form and tone that would not be possible in the more cohesive tradition of the epic poem. The Marlowe Papers is a fictional autobiography of Christopher Marlowe based on the idea that he used the pseudonym ‘William Shakespeare’ (employing the Stratford merchant as a ‘front’), having faked his own death and fled abroad to escape capital charges for atheism and heresy. The verse novel, written in dramatic scenes, traces his life from his flight on 30 May 1593, through the back-story (starting in 1586) that led to his prosecution, as we similarly track his progress on the Continent and in England until just after James I accedes to the English throne. The poems are a mixture of longer blank verse narratives and smaller, more lyrical poems (including sonnets). Explanatory notes to the poems, and a Dramatis Personae, are included on the advice of my creative supervisor. Critical Component: Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare This part of the thesis explores the relationship between early modern biographies and fiction, questioning certain ‘facts’ of Marlovian and Shakespearean biography in the light of the ‘thought experiment’ of the verse novel. Marlowe’s reputation for violence is reassessed in the light of scholarly doubt about the veracity of the inquest document, and Shakespeare’s sonnets are reinterpreted through the lens of the Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship. The argument is that orthodox and non-Stratfordian theories might be considered competing paradigms; simply different frameworks through which interpretation of the same data leads to different conclusions. Interdisciplinary influences include Kuhn’s philosophy of scientific discovery, post-modern narrativist history, neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics (in the form of the ‘observer effect’). Data that is either anomalous or inexplicable under the orthodox paradigm is demonstrated to support a Marlovian reading, and the current state of the Shakespeare authorship question is assessed. Certain primary source documents were examined at the Bodleian Library, at the British Library, and at Lambeth Palace Library. Versions of Chapters 2, 3 and 4, written under supervision during this doctorate, have all been published, either as a book chapter or as a journal article, within the last year (Barber, 2009, 2010a, b)

Engagements with the pastoral mode in the poetry and plays of Derek Walcott

The intention of this thesis is to investigate engagements with the pastoral mode in the poetry and plays of Derek Walcott. This will be achieved through a focus upon four key areas: Edenic symbolism, classical reception, allusions to the visual arts, and pastoral drama. The pastoral is a complex mode, with a long literary history. I argue that Walcott engages with the mode in a process of transformative interactions with the legacy of Eurocentric representations of Caribbean settings, the notion of the Caribbean as an Edenic space, the classical tradition including the pastorals of Theocritus and Virgil, the tradition of landscape art and both the piscatory pastoral and pastoral drama. These engagements allow for the subversion of generic expectations, and a revisionary, transformative approach to the pastoral mode and its many associations. This results in a distinctly Walcottian type of pastoral, one which evades reductive idealisation and restrictive uses of aesthetic models, in favour of a creative and profound engagement with pastoral’s core themes

Henry James Goes to the Movies

Why has a nineteenth-century author with an elitist reputation proved so popular with directors as varied as William Wyler, François Truffaut, and James Ivory? A partial answer lies in the way many of Henry James’s recurring themes still haunt us: the workings of power, the position of women in society, the complexities of sexuality and desire. Susan Griffin has assembled fifteen of the world’s foremost authorities on Henry James to examine both the impact of James on film and the impact of film on James. Anthony Mazella traces the various adaptations of The Turn of the Screw, from novel to play to opera to film. Peggy McCormack examines the ways the personal lives of Peter Bogdanovich and then-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd influenced critical reaction to Daisy Miller (1974). Leland Person points out the consequences of casting Christopher Reeve—then better known as Superman—in The Bostonians (1984) during the conservative political context of the first Reagan presidency. Nancy Bentley defends Jane Campion’s anachronistic reading of Portrait of a Lady (1996) as being more “authentic” than the more common period costume dramas. Dale Bauer observes James’s influence on such films as Next Stop, Wonderland (1998) and Notting Hill (1999). Marc Bousquet explores the ways Wings of the Dove (1997) addresses the economic and cultural situations of Gen-X viewers. Other fascinating essays as well as a complete filmography and bibliography of work on James and film round out the collection. Susan M. Griffin, professor of English at the University of Louisville, is the editor of the Henry James Review. This collection of sophisticated essays contributes to a growing field that could be labeled ‘James film studies.’ —Choice The essays enrich a new field of James studies, as well as provide a fascinating account of more than fifty years of film history. —English Literature in Transition In this anthology of essays, 16 academics dissect novelist Henry James’s seemingly inexhaustible allure to filmmakers ranging from William Wyler to Jane Campion and examine the degrees to which these celluloid versions succeed in translating James’s highly uncinematic, psychological prose to the screen. —Entertainment Weekly The essay entitled ‘Based on the Novel by Henry James: The Golden Bowl 2000’ is one of the best I’ve ever read about the film adaptation of a difficult novel. —Film Quarterly A well-informed, well-written book which extends the way we think about Henry James and his work. . . . Includes the best established and newer voices in James studies. —Greg W. Zacharias A comprehensive, impressive collection of essays on film adaptations of Henry James. —Hollins Critic Indispensable for anyone interested in James adaptations. —Studies in the Novelhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/1059/thumbnail.jp