<oo>→<met> Meter, rhythm, and rhyme

Maintained by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt@gmail.com) Last modified: 2017-11-18T17:02:00+0000

The computationally assisted analysis of formal features in Russian poetry

About this site

This project, developed by Elise Thorsen and David J. Birnbaum, is dedicated to the design and deployment of computational tools to support the analysis of formal features in Russian poetry. These tools involve the detection of stress in Russian texts presented in native orthography and the subsequent derivation of meter and rhyme patterns from stress and orthographic information. The output of those processes is an XML document that can provide the basis for visualizations of formal features (see, for example, the verse tables of the sample poems below). Beyond these reports, the informational mark-up of poetic texts is intended to enable the characterization of formal features in large digitized poetic corpora to support research in sub-fields including quantitative metrics, genre studies, and diachronic studies of stylistics and influence.

Selected publications and conference presentations

• Thorsen, Elise and David J. Birnbaum. Exploring inexact rhyme in Russian verse. Slides from our presentation at Plotting poetry. On mechanically enhanced reading , University of Basel 2017-10-06.
• Thorsen, Elise and David J. Birnbaum. Enabling the automated identification and analysis of meter and rhyme in Russian verse. Proposal and slides from our presentation at DH2015: Global digital humanities, Sydney 2015-07-01
• Birnbaum, David J. and Elise Thorsen. Markup and meter: Using XML tools to teach a computer to think about versification. Presented at Balisage: The Markup Conference 2015, Washington, DC, August 11 - 14, 2015. In Proceedings of Balisage: The Markup Conference 2015. Balisage Series on Markup Technologies, vol. 15 (2015). doi:10.4242/BalisageVol15.Birnbaum01.
• Adams, Lawrence D. and David J. Birnbaum. Perspectives on computer programming for the humanities. Originally published in Text technology 7, 1 (1997), 1–17, and updated for the present online version.

Working papers and research reports

• Strong and weak metrical positions

Sample poems

Under development; interim results

• Ахматова, Анна Андреевна: Вечером, Лилии, Любовь, Наследница, Он любил, Памяти Сергею Есенину
• Гиппиус, Зинаида Николаевна: Нелюбовь
• Пастернак, Борис Леонидович: Его речь
• Пушкин, Александр Сергеевич: Бесы, Евгений Онегин, К *** (Ты богоматерь, нет сомненья), К *** (Я помню чудное мгновенье), Кавказский пленник, Пророк

GitHub repositories

• https://github.com/enthorsen/russian-poetry (generate visualizations)
• https://github.com/djbpitt/poetry (explore rhyme)

Miscellaneous

• Bibliography
• Internet resources
• A computational approach to identifying the place of stress in Russian poetry [watch this space]
• Early mockup output

Unless otherwise specified, all materials on this site were developed by Elise Thorsen and David J. Birnbaum. The development of the stress dictionary was assisted by Sam Depretis and Erin Harrington; portions of the poetry corpus were edited by Kyleen Pickering. The graph at the top of this page, illustrating the metrical realization of iambic tetrameter according to syllable position, is from: N. V. Lapšina, I. K. Romanovič, and B. I. Jarxo, Metričeskij spravočnik k stixotvorenijam A. S. Puškina, Moscow: Academia, 1934, p. 134bis. http://feb-web.ru/feb/pushkin/critics/jar/jar-005-.htm.