English Bards and Unknown Reviewers: a Stylometric Analysis of Thomas Moore and the Christabel Review

Fraught relations between authors and critics are a commonplace of literary history. The particular case that we discuss in this article, a negative review of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Christabel (1816), has an additional point of interest beyond the usual mixture of amusement and resentment that surrounds a critical rebuke: the authorship of the review remains, to this day, uncertain. The purpose of this article is to investigate the possible candidacy of Thomas Moore as the author of the provocative review. It seeks to solve a puzzle of almost two hundred years, and in the process clear a valuable scholarly path in Irish Studies, Romanticism, and in our understanding of Moore's role in a prominent literary controversy of the age

"The greatest Poet that has [n]ever existed" -- A Narrative Networks Analysis of the Poems of Ossian

Surprising as it may seem, applications of statistical methods to physics were inspired by the social sciences, which in turn are linked to the humanities. So perhaps it is not as unlikely as it might first appear for a group of statistical physicists and humanists to come together to investigate one of the subjects of Thomas Jefferson's poetic interests from a scientific point of view. And that is the nature of this article: a collaborative interdisciplinary analysis of the works of a figure Jefferson described as a ''rude bard of the North'' and ''the greatest Poet that has ever existed.'' In 2012, a subset of this team embraced an increase in interdisciplinary methods to apply the new science of complex networks to longstanding questions in comparative mythology. Investigations of network structures embedded in epic narratives allowed universal properties to be identified and ancient texts to be compared to each other. The approach inspired new challenges in mathematics, physics and even processes in industry, thereby illustrating how collaborations of this nature can be mutually beneficial and can capture the attention of a public, often ill-served by academic communication and dissemination. This article derives from these works, and from our consistent objective to help bridge the perceived gap between the natural sciences and the humanities. First we discuss the history of relationships between the two. Then we discuss the origins of the poems of Ossian and Jefferson's interests. We follow with our statistical approach in the next section. In the final section, we explore ideas for future research on these themes and discuss the potential of collaborative pursuits of human curiosity to overcome the two cultures dichotomy and embrace a scientific- and humanities-literate information age.Comment: Contriution to book chapte

Capacity Enhancement in Digital Humanities in the United Kingdom and Ireland: Training and Beyond

This first discussion paper, produced by the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Network in consultation with the wider Digital Humanities (DH) community in the two countries and beyond, summarises the findings of a) the first workshop organised by the network and b) the post-workshop survey and offers recommendations based on these findings

Communicating the Value and Impact of Digital Humanities in Teaching, Research, and Infrastructure Development

This is the second discussion paper produced by the UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Network in consultation with the wider Digital Humanities (DH) Community in the two countries and beyond. It summarises the findings of the second workshop organised by the network, and offers recommendations based on these findings

Masks of Refinement: Pseudonym, Paratext, and Authorship in the Early Poetry of Thomas Moore

Journal articleThomas Moore adopted the pseudonymous persona of Thomas Little in order to place his early amorous poetry within distinct literary, historical, and generic contexts. He was motivated by a desire to provoke a favorable response from his readers by alluding to his literary precursors, but also by a keen awareness that crude biographical inferences were likely to be made on the basis of the poems' morality. These aesthetic and functional objectives are evident in the overlapping irony and sincerity of the volume's paratextual strategies. These strategies consistently tread the nebulous line between playfully activating readerly expectations and protecting Moore's identity, while also revealing the author's responsiveness to the principles and consequences of romantic authorship. The hostile critical reception for this amorous poetry prompted revisions which affirm Moore's conception of authorship as a pliable construction, and reveal the roles of multiple agents within the literary marketplace in shaping the function of the romantic author.Irish Research Councilpeer-reviewe

Pagan angels and a moral law: Byron and Moore's blasphemous publications

Lord Byron's Cain and Thomas Moore's The Loves of the Angels are linked by critical accusations of blasphemy which threatened their legal and commercial integrity. Comparing the critical and legal reception of the two works and the subsequent responses of the two authors reveals complex formal and informal systems of regulation that were activated in the case of blasphemous publications. Legal findings against Cain provoked Byron to insist on his authorial autonomy but also to acknowledge the growing power and influence of a mass reading public. Moore's substitution of Islam for Christianity at his poem's religious foundation represented a flexible mode of authorship where its broad social and cultural influences were reflected in his recognition of textual contingency. Together, the two cases highlight paradoxes in the legal control of intellectual property and blasphemy in the Romantic period, while the two authors responses provide a means of examining their differing perspectives on authorship and revision.Portions of this work were supported by an Irish Research Council / Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND CARA Fellowship.peer-reviewed2018-06-0

English Bards and Unknown Reviewers: a Stylometric Analysis of Thomas Moore and the Christabel Review

Journal articleFraught relations between authors and critics are a commonplace of literary history. The particular case that we discuss in this article, a negative review of Samuel Taylor Coleridge s Christabel (1816), has an additional point of interest beyond the usual mixture of amusement and resentment that surrounds a critical rebuke: the authorship of the review remains, to this day, uncertain. The purpose of this article is to investigate the possible candidacy of Thomas Moore as the author of the provocative review. It seeks to solve a puzzle of almost two hundred years, and in the process clear a valuable scholarly path in Irish Studies, Romanticism, and in our understanding of Moore s role in a prominent literary controversy of the age.peer-reviewe

Pagan angels and a moral law: Byron and Moore\u27s blasphemous publications

Lord Byron\u27s Cain and Thomas Moore\u27s The Loves of the Angels are linked by critical accusations of blasphemy which threatened their legal and commercial integrity. Comparing the critical and legal reception of the two works and the subsequent responses of the two authors reveals complex formal and informal systems of regulation that were activated in the case of blasphemous publications. Legal findings against Cain provoked Byron to insist on his authorial autonomy but also to acknowledge the growing power and influence of a mass reading public. Moore\u27s substitution of Islam for Christianity at his poem\u27s religious foundation represented a flexible mode of authorship where its broad social and cultural influences were reflected in his recognition of textual contingency. Together, the two cases highlight paradoxes in the legal control of intellectual property and blasphemy in the Romantic period, while the two authors responses provide a means of examining their differing perspectives on authorship and revision.Portions of this work were supported by an Irish Research Council / Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND CARA Fellowship.2018-06-0

Carefully Corrected / Mutilated Mess: Ossian's Textual Legacies

Conference paperControversies over legitimacy are an essential part of the literary reception and cultural meaning (Mulholland 394) of James Macpherson s Ossian poems. Many revisionist readings of Ossian attempt to preserve the text from contamination by its author, quarantining the cultural legacy of the first complete edition of the Ossian poems, The Works of Ossian (1765), by disregarding its successor, The Poems of Ossian (1773). Thus, Howard Gaskill, modern editor of Ossian (Edinburgh UP, 1996), characterised the 1773 Poems as a mess which has been bequeathed to us in edition after edition ever since (xxiv). Where Macpherson hopes to have brought the work to a state of correctness, which will preclude all future improvements (1:v), Gaskill laments the authorial vanity which is really behind so many of these revisions (xxiv) and selects the 1765 Works as his copy-text. Though Macpherson described the 1773 edition as [c]arefully corrected, and greatly improved literary criticism has treated it as an illegitimate offspring. In textual terms, then, the choice between these two options equates to a prioritising of the legacy of Ossian or the legacy of Macpherson, mirroring the central terms of the debate about the cultural authenticity of the work. This paper will examine the legacies of the Ossianic copy-texts, arguing that to favour any particular edition perpetuates a limited understanding of many elements--authority, originality, authenticity--which have fuelled interest in Ossian since its initial publication. To circumvent the reification of a singular Works or Poems text, the speakers will present the crowdsourced annotation tool and genetic critical edition of the new social edition (Siemens, et al.), Ossian Online, as a means of unearthing the plural textual shifts and the multiple legacies of this seminal work.  peer-reviewe

Book history and digital humanities in the long eighteenth century

This article examines the current state of research at the intersections of book history and digital humanities within the field of eighteenth-century studies. It addresses the popular and intellectual origins of the nexus between the book and the digital and surveys developments in this area of eighteenth-century studies in the last decade. The article examines current research trends within the field, with a particular focus on large-scale corpora and databases and the use of distant reading methods, and assesses what directions the future might hold for research in book history and digital humanities in the long eighteenth century.Not peer reviewe