Group Members:
Kristen Gray
Charity Hancock
Daniel Kason
Kathryn Skutlin
Allison Wyss

The Data Analysis Group of Professor Fraistat’s ENGL 738T seminar set out to use the visualization and analysis tool Woodchipper with the goal of finding patterns among a collection of texts.  We chose the “Gothic” genre and further limited the texts to the 18th and 19th centuries—beginning with arguably the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, and ending with Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  The initial thirty Gothic texts chosen consist of some of the most renowned titles in Gothic literature, including The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and works by the Brontë sisters and Edgar Allan Poe. A complete spreadsheet of the texts can be found here.  In order to further test our research, outliers were also added. The list of non-Gothic texts included Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and slave narratives by Mary Prince and Frederick Douglass. The digital versions of the texts were found through Project Gutenberg and Hathi Trust. MITH’s Travis Brown used these texts to generate a list of topic models, shown here.

While Gothic is an established genre, we found “the Gothic” an intriguingly difficult term to define.  We agreed that there are similar Gothic traits (horror, the supernatural, mood, etc.), but not all appear in every text. We also found that there was the potential that the genre evolved over time or could be further divided into subsets of the genre. These recognitions led us to several curious research questions: Can we identify through data mining the general Gothic elements? Which texts adhere? Which break away? Why? Do some passages register as “most” or “least” Gothic? Working with students from the University of Virginia, we hoped to answer these questions by generating interesting results. When we met as a group and perused our list of texts, we selected several themes we thought might be promising to investigate using Woodchipper. The topics we decided upon were as follows: chronology, genre deviations, geography/setting, and gender.

One subgroup approached their topic of geography from a more exploratory perspective, applying external constraints to text choices (known setting of novel) while remaining open to the direction Woodchipper’s results would take them. Likewise, another subgroup chose texts based around their overarching topic of chronology and were initially able to accommodate the wide-ranging results they encountered. However, when they began to look for specific deviations from the Gothic genre (the delineation of Science Fiction and Horror), the topics returned by Woodchipper did not always seem relevant to their investigation. The subgroup interested in gender (1) (2), who followed a more categorization-based approach, also experienced the same conundrum. They started out with clear definitions of the male and female Gothic, which they hoped Woodchipper would help them interrogate. While they were able to discern some alignment between the results and their guiding hypothesis (the limiting and faulty perspective of male and female Gothic subgenres), many of the topics that governed the resulting splash patterns, though compelling in and of themselves, did not directly aid their inquiry.

For those groups that ran multiple texts for cross-examination, an additional feature of layering in Woodchipper would have been helpful. When they ran multiple works, there were often disproportionate data point clusters across the texts, which made it impossible to view the data point details on the bottom layers:

With a bit of reconfiguring, they were able to strategically list their texts pre-run so that higher volume works appeared in the bottommost layers; however, they were still unable to access those submerged data points. To reverse the process in order to do so was time-consuming. One group member in particular decided to run two texts separately in order to bypass this issue, though such an approach underutilized Woodchipper’s large-scale text-mining abilities:

We were surprised in our first post-Woodchipper run meeting to find that we were all using such divergent methods, which gave us a range of experiences to discuss. One group member could give advice to another, and each subgroup could return to the project with new ideas for fresh approaches—different combinations of texts to run, different methods for looking at splash patterns, and new ways to understand the topics.  After multiple runs, additional texts were added to the original list to further solve (or complicate) our findings.

Though our team included five students studying at UMD and two students from UVA, cross-campus collaboration worked well within the project model we established. With everyone running their own data, then meeting to discuss the findings, there were few scheduling hiccups. Subgroups consisting of two to three members had an easy enough time communicating electronically, rather than face to face. Moreover, it proved fruitful even when a remote group member digressed from the assigned topic, because the resulting analysis was unexpected and showed us the strengths and weakness of yet another way to use Woodchipper.

Labeling topics was a particularly frustrating but ultimately fascinating aspect of the project. Regarding one recurring set in particular (“Felt,” “Made,” “Conduct,” “Received,” “Heart”), each of us offered a varying interpretation in our individual projects. Not surprisingly, our different labels led us to view the category differently and reach alternate interpretations of the data. It was only through collaboration that we became aware of the abundance of differing options and were thus wary of hastily adhering to the first or easiest one.

The biggest challenge was melding our findings into one cohesive conclusion. While each of our individual methodologies matured as a result of discussion, they never merged into one unified method. By the end of the project, we could agree on a very general set of “good idea” practices, but no steadfast rules for processing texts and no overarching procedures for understanding them. Thus, we could compare our results tentatively, perhaps interpretively, but certainly not conclusively. Different ideas went into the chipper in different ways and through different methods—could we be disappointed not to end up with a grand and unifying conclusion about the Gothic novel? Well, yeah, some of us were disappointed.

Ultimately, we decided it was better that way. Instead of conclusions, we found more questions. Each person’s approach led to a different way of seeing the data. The collaborative approach, like Woodchipper, is effective for inspiring new and deeper ways of thinking about literature. However, the individual must be capable of choosing one approach and following it to a conclusive critical end. This parallels all the work we did with Woodchipper. While Woodchipper might be able to more definitively “prove” a trend with a much larger data set, our limited number of texts only allowed it to act as a tool for generating ideas. Interpreting the data, then following it up with old-fashioned textual analysis, falls to the human user.

As Technoro Team MARKUP’s sole Windows user, it was clear from the start that “lack of cool” would not be my only hindrance during the beginning phases of the project: our team’s software set-up instructions were geared towards the Mac user, and included a Mac-specific streamlining program, GitHub for Mac. As the GitHub for Mac site chirps brightly, “When you first launch GitHub for Mac, we’ll help you set up your GitHub account and find repositories already on your computer. From there, you can start managing repositories.” In short: we’ve got you, brother!

Well, not so much help from GitHub, I found, if you are the aging, brown-suited, fuddy-duddy PC guy. At the end of the day, Git is just not fully supported by Windows. This does not mean that PC users are precluded from the project work; the software infrastructure setup — and support thereof — is just chunkier, slower, and the components are less condensed. In fact, anticipate an agonizing project acceleration rate: of my total project time investment, approximately 60% was spent on initial techno-troubleshooting, with only 40% on actual TEI markup.

GitHub for the PC User is distinctly less program-supervised, involving multiple user steps and several separate components, including the GitHub website, GitBash and GitGUI. From the position of a complete command-line newbie, the GitHub Guide does not sufficiently hand-hold overall – “wait, that command saved what where?” – but does include a subsection called the Windows Setup Guide, located here: <http://help.github.com/win-set-up-git/>

In hopes that my notes may help streamline the Windows set-up process for future users, the essential components of the Git setup process – in the context of our markup project purposes — are outlined here in “newbie-speak”:

1)     GitHub.com

This is where the games begin, and where I found myself revisiting often in order to access others’ file changes, view changes to the repository (or, “repo”), and perform other repo-related tasks.

Setup Phase One, Step One is to visit GitHub.com and download the Git Setup Wizard, which unpacks both GitBash and GitGUI into a specified folder. You will return to this site after you generate a new “SSH key” in GitBash, as follows:

2)     GitBash

GitBash is, well, a Bash prompt – think Windows Command Prompt – with access to Git. It is here that a user may run commands to various ends. Specifically, for Phase One, Step Two, the user will want to get that SSH key generated and copy it in back at GitHub.com. In short, GitHub will “use SSH keys to establish a secure connection between your computer and GitHub,” and this process, sufficiently outlined in the Windows Setup Guide, involves three sub-steps: 1) checking for already-existing SSH keys, 2) backing-up and removing any found, and 3) generating a new SSH key. At this point, you will create and enter a pass phrase. Be wiser than this user, and note this pass phrase.

Phase One, Step Three: Also from GitBash, you will set up your Git username and email (to be used on GitHub.com, as well as certain administrative tasks on GitBash). Again, the GitHub Windows Setup Guide proved easy-to-follow for this step.

Once set with Git login details, it’s on to Phase Two: Forking, which can be done fairly simply back at GitHub.com (in short, click the “fork“ button in the repository you wish to access). However, there is a following action, which is to clone this repo locally. Remember, Git is a “revision control system”: therefore the meta-process is 1) clone data so that you can 2) edit select data and then 3) upload changes that will be reviewed before being processed onwards. This was a sedating thought in the midst of command prompts, file paths, keys, and forks: oh, right…there is a greater purpose here.

So, to “clone the repository” (rather, to make a local copy of the repo of XML files in which we type out our markup, and which the system will push back to the master branch from later), we run a cloning code in GitBash, followed by one last code (in truncated form, “remote add upstream”, then “git fetch upstream”) that changes your default remote from pointing to “origin” to the original repo from which it was forked. And, here is where you will likely need to wield that pass phrase from Phase One, Step Two.

Once forked, all infrastructure is in place for the user to return, or push, all edits into the repository, for team access through GitHub.com, review and further process.

Where and how to properly access the schema file [containing the coding “rules”] remains a mystery to me: our team leader kindly emailed me the “Relax NG Compact Syntax Schema” file, which had to remain where saved (for me, my Desktop) in order to be recognized by another product, not a part of the Git package: the Oxygen XML Editor.

3)     Oxygen XML Editor

Perhaps the most user-friendly of all components, the Oxygen XML Editor is where the PC user can shake off her bewilderment with Git and let the bewilderment with TEI markup begin! Oxygen allows for multiple XML files to be opened simultaneously as tabs, and if your schema is properly in place, the “Validate” feature provides feedback on any exceptions or errors you’ve entered. Just be sure to *save* each file after any changes; moreover, be sure to save in the cloned directory (for example, mine defaulted to “Jennifer Ausden/sg-data/data/engl738t/tei“) not to your desktop, or else GitHub.com cannot locate your changes to the files, and the push process will essentially be doomed. Speaking of uploading doom…

4)     GitGUI

GitGUI, while part of the original download bundle, was utilized only when I was struggling to push my Oxygen XML files – at least, those containing any changes since the last push or since the original clone, as the case may be – back to the repo at GitHub.com.

When I tried running in GitBash the Windows Help Guide’s command “git push origin master”, I was met with a nerve-shattering error message:

The thought of “losing history” inspired an immediate chai latte break, but upon return, I warily entered the command for ‘git push –help’, whose advice brought with it another surge of fear. In a nutshell: this “fast-forward error” is likely happening because someone else is attempting a simultaneous push. Wait if you can, but if all else fails, go ahead and add “–force” to the end of the code. DO NOT force a push unless you are absolutely sure you know what you’re doing.

Failing to meet that criteria, I had a brief moment of panic, and decided to implement my own local version control: first by attempting to move “my” assigned XML files from the cloned repo folder to a local folder, until I realized the push could not happen from another folder than the original cloned location. Local version control, Plan B was to create a surrogate system; namely, a highly sophisticated JIC process (…that is, emails to myself of the XML files containing my code, “Just In Case”).

Thus feeling fairly secured – for some reason – my next step was a test work-around, by switching over from Bash to GUI. The latter, upon opening, offers three options: “Create New Repository”, “Clone Existing Repository”, or “Open Existing Repository.” In confidence I had (probably) cloned sufficiently at this point, I chose to “Open”, successfully “opening” C:/Users/Jennifer Ausden/sg-data/ . This interface was much more friendly; here was a little window of “Unstaged Changes” in the helpful form of a file-path list (for example,“data/engl738t/ox-ms_abinger_c57-0022”) which with simple clicks allowed me to “Stage,” “Commit,” and finally “Push” back to the master branch and repository.

Heart racing, I flew back to the repository on GitHub.com, and lo and behold, there at [sg-data / data / eng738t / tei] were all the files (specifically, “ox-ms_abinger_c57-0022″ through “ox-ms_abinger_c57-0031″) to which I had made and saved a change.

Huzzah! Scores of emails and help searches later, the brave little PC was now equipped with:

1) a secure connection to GitHub.com;

2) a GitHub.com username and password;

3) a “fork” in the repository at GitHub.com;

4) a local, cloned version of the holding-place for all the empty XML files, to be filled with our markup coding magic via Oxygen;

5) the Oxygen XML Editor program in which to type up the code for each file;

6) a copy of the schema file, so Oxygen could properly “Validate” each file; aka, alert me to any coding incompatible with the schema, and;

7) through Git GUI, a way to push back my changes to the repo on GitHub.com.

And so it appears, Windows users can eventually function in, and contribute to, a team Git project. Just anticipate being, at least at start-up, the old Windows guy in the brown suit.

When I called my parents the week of the DH Bootcamp, I casually dropped the fact that I had gotten an introduction to XML:

“Oh, that’s just a mark-up language,” my dad said.

Just? Okay, granted, both of my parents know a little bit about computers (and by a little bit, I mean that computers and coding have been their careers since the 90s), but perhaps they did not comprehend that it was the English major son, not the son majoring in computer science, that was speaking to them.

But in any case, the introduction to encoding I had received was a bridge between my literary world, and the world of the rest of my family. XML evoked an uncanny feeling in me. I had a sense of what I was looking at. I had been raised with computers and discussions of data, server admins, C++, Javascript, etc. But why was I seeing it in an English class? Didn’t I change majors in undergrad. to avoid this sort of thing?

Well, perhaps the different perspective was what I needed to find some interest in the digital world. Textual encoding was appealing because it was an intimate engagement with the text (the text being Frankenstein) without the pressure of close reading; I was not struggling with the text, the text was letting me read it. I was carefully combing the text, multiple times really, between the manuscript pages, the transcription, and the lines text I was actually tagging. Rather than searching for nuances of meaning, I was looking at what was there, and what had been there. I felt privy to some information that not many have ever gotten the chance to see, and I was making the decisions on how all of it was to be understood.

“How it was to be understood”…That is a pretty empowering thought when your simply typing del rend=”strikethrough” around the majority of things you find worth tagging, but it is nonetheless an important idea to consider in how someone encoding a text should think. Are encoders the next generation in the line of editors and annotators of texts? Do they fulfill the same function, and do they possess the same responsibilities?

That is difficult to answer, but my short time spent encoding Frankenstein has given me some basic thoughts:

The Rabbit Hole:

Anyone trying to annotate, edit, and generally find meaning in a text is subject to the problem of the infinite amount of information that can be collected and juxtaposed with the text. For the encoder: what gets tagged and what gets left out? Since I was not involved in deciding the rules of the schema, fortunately, many of these questions were answered before I even thought of them.

The sic tag was the earliest incarnation of this issue. As I understand it, using this tag means the encoder finds a flaw in the manuscript. An editor, of course, will want to change and “correct” it, but an encoder? Well, are we not being more “faithful” to the manuscript by allowing its imperfections to remain? And then, what, if the tag were to remain, could be tagged with sic? Just misspellings? What about variations in place or character names, if they occurred? Can the sic tag be incorporated into a larger family for mistakes and irregularities, associated with tags for stray marks, doodles, or notes that are not part of the novel’s text? What would this family of tags be accomplishing in pointing out and subsuming all of these phenomena under the same rule?

A situation like the one above is why I find myself relieved to not have make decisions regarding the schema, and furthermore in not having to use the sic tag at all, due to the preference for a more “faithful” rendering of the manuscript. But of course, even considering the idea of what it means to be faithful to the manuscript opens up another potentially endless pathway and is another issue altogether.

A less dangerous path, however, that does open up in this line of thought is the temptation that encoders and editors both face in engaging with their texts: enforcing their views onto the text and to the readers.

Encoding Neutrality?:

When reading texts in, say, a Norton Critical Edition, there is the risk that the editor may influence a reading of the material. The footnotes may contain allegorical interpretations, strained connections to other texts, or pure assumptions on the editor’s part, and these can mold the mind of the reader in a particular way.

Encoding, I see, can run the risk just as well. If one were tagging allusions in Frankenstein, one might start with allusions to Paradise Lost, the foundational text of the monster’s language acquisition and the text that affects his perception of his place in the world. An encoder may decide to tag quotations, echoes, or parallel events between the two works, but in doing so, could be considered as going too far with their interpretation. A reader utilizing the encoded text would be fed the tagged allusions and echoes, and thus form a insoluble link between Paradise Lost and Frankenstein that may not necessarily exist or be unanimously accepted.

Is this the voice of Milton’s Satan?

If an encoder wants to delve into this sort of creative encoding, that is, tagging more abstract concepts, that extends beyond simple deletions and revisions and the physical markings of the manuscript, I feel this is an issue they might eventually face, and so would again run into the complication of how “faithful” they were being to the manuscript, by exploring meaning, and marking the text as containing a meaning that is not physically evident in the manuscript.

For me, the process of encoding innately carries with it the sense of what I have been calling “faithfulness”. There is an interesting line to be considered in what defines exactly what an encoder does, what are they allowed to do, and what are their responsibilities in encoding a text that set it apart from editing or annotating a text. These sorts of questions, I think, can help first-time encoders understand exactly what it is they are doing.

Now that Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and a collection of Poe’s stories are available to me, I thought I’d share my second batch of runs on science fiction within the Gothic (if you missed it, here’s the first one).

First: Verne who, together with Wells, comprise the Fathers of Science Fiction. While I don’t think this novel is considered a Gothic work, certainly not in the way The Time Machine is sometimes considered Gothic, Twenty Thousand Leagues nonetheless owes a great debt to this genre. Certainly, the mysterious Captain Nemo resembles classic Gothic characters.

While matching Verne’s novel up with Gothic works, I came across a difficulty that resembled my problem with The Time Machine: a cluttering of novel-specific words. In Twenty Thousand Leagues, the Nautical theme shine through in two categories. Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, or: The Transformation provided the most interesting results:

Brown’s novel is sometimes categorized as horror, and that shines through here: “death, life, horror, mind, fear.” It’s interesting, however, that Verne’s novel, primarily a science fiction novel arguably emerging from the Gothic, also, to a lesser extent, shares this category.

I decided to investigate this finding by matching up Verne’s novel with other works. This Horror category appeared commonly enough that I was forced to take notice. Is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea a horror novel after all?

Getting ahead of myself, I matched Verne with Poe, eager to see the results:

First, a note about Poe: the collection included, rather than comprising all of the author’s short stories, totals 23 tales. Moreover, while Verne and Wells can unquestionably be considered science fiction, and to a large extent Shelley, as well, Poe is a mixed bag. He is often credited as popularizing many genres, working within the Gothic to produce mystery, early horror, and yes, science fiction (although, you could argue that the stories themselves can represent several genres at once). With a bit of research, this collection appears to be a healthy mix of these genres. In the future, it might be fruitful to work with a collection only of Poe’s science fiction works.

Back to the results. The Horror topic, as predicted, appears again, with Poe stretching out this subfield further. The other curiosity is: “strange, mind, thought, seemed, dream.” While clearly vague, this category has to do with internal thoughts, a theme that has more to do with Gothic fiction than science fiction. The possibly fantastic element of this category, however, alludes to both genres.

Another note before I move on: while it doesn’t appear here, the semi-“Cosmic” or, more accurately, “Light/Darkness” category, “light,” “night,” “moon,” “dark,” “sun,” frequently occurs in my runs with Verne, presenting an interesting, if tenuous, link to my earlier runs with The Time Machine. Running these two texts alone confirms it, with a fairly strong correlation:

I now centered my attention on Poe, which more easily matched up with the Gothic texts. Running it with Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray produced interesting results:

Once again, you can see Poe’s fascination with Horror. The ambiguous Thoughts/Dreams category appears again, which makes sense because both works contain an element of the fantastic. The word, “seemed,” in this category, as well as in “seemed,” “time,” “appeared,” “made,” “same,” also links it with subjectivity. While this run of course doesn’t point to any clear conclusions, Poe seems to align very well with most Gothic texts, especially ones (like Dorian Gray) that have anything to do with the supernatural and fantastic.

Before concluding, I’ll present the cacophony of running all four science fiction texts together: Shelley, Wells, Verne, and Poe:

My semi-color blindness gave me some trouble here. I don’t want to take these comparisons too far, but there are a few things to mention. First, the appearance of the Light/Time or Sun/Moon category did not go unnoticed. To my mind, none of these texts are primarily concerned with outer space (Poe’s story about traveling to the moon is sadly not included here), but the Sun and Moon probably serve other purposes. Is this focus indicative of science fiction’s fascination with space and the heavens? Possibly, but I don’t think Woodchipper offers any greater insights here.

The reappearance of Horror is curious. Poe, Frankenstein, and Twenty Thousand Leagues spread across this category fairly evenly. What does this mean? Without assuming any familiarity with these works, form this run alone, I would probably sooner group them in the horror genre than science fiction. However, because I know these works together influenced an enormous body of science fiction literature, this run tells me that horror and sci-fi might have more in common than I realize. This makes a lot of sense for Poe and Frankenstein, but Verne surprised me.

An aside about the functions of Woodchipper itself: the ability to zoom in on specific sections of the grid, which I believe was recently added, proved exceedingly helpful for runs with three or four texts like this.

Concerning The Time Machine, Wells’ text expressed the fewest comparisons with the other texts. I used the zoom function and noticed the novel’s nodes scattered among the various categories, but I couldn’t see enough evidence to draw any conclusions here.

As in my first run, I was left with more questions than answers. Science fiction, especially as a subgenre within the Gothic, is especially difficult to locate. Indeed, in this second batch of runs, I encountered more associations with Horror than Science Fiction. This may suggest, however, that the two genres have much in common. This isn’t surprising, considering their roots in the Gothic, and their focus on the fantastic and supernatural. I encountered little that supports the idea that science fiction is concerned more with the societal than with the personal. Indeed, I found the opposite to be true, suggesting that this trend may have appeared later on. Perhaps in using these four authors as a template for future science fiction works, I can trace the origins of later texts in early sci-fi and in the Gothic genre itself. This project may prove useful, but I also suspect that while it has the possibility of producing answers, it’s almost a guarantee that I’ll also be left with more questions, as well.

Some of our Horror texts took a bit longer than expected to load. But when they came, I threw them all up through Woodchipper at once and I noticed some very interesting overlay of topics.

The classic “Horror Topic” (things, thing, seemed, horror, hideous) almost overlaps the topic related to parts (hand, eyes, face, heads, hands).

What could explain the overlap?

Is horror linked to the body in an integral way?  Does the proximity of “horror” words to “body” words indicate a fear that is linked to the body? Or could it be indicative of bodily monstrosity? Basically, do these results indicate a fear of the body or a fear for the body? Or are characters using their bodies to sense fear?

To investigate I pulled out a selection of the paragraphs that fell in the upper left of the chart, those which scored highly in “horror” and “body parts.” I ran the chipper several times, with the texts in different orders, to make different novels sit on top, so I could get at them. I pulled out examples from eight different texts. Then I went through the paragraphs and bolded the words that I suspected put them into the horror category. I italicized the body parts. This way I could see for myself the proximity of horror words to body parts.

(My choice of words is certainly subjective. Another scholar might categorize differently. I’m not certain I match Woodchipper either. I didn’t, however, have any trouble finding either type of word in any of Woodchipper’s selected paragraphs.)

Here’s what I found:

Frankenstein (84-0242)

Mary Shelley (1818)

Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed and drew him towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes and uttered a shrill scream; I drew his hand forcibly from his face and said, ‘Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to hurt you; listen to me.’

The Works of Edgar Allen Poe (2148-0456)

Edgar Allen Poe (1850)

There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the jaws and lips remained rigid as before;) and at length the same hideous voice which I have already described, broke forth:

The Works of Edgar Allen Poe (2148-0205)

Edgar Allen Poe (1850)

I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:

The Woman in White (583-2109)

Wilkie Collins (1859)

“How do you know?” she said faintly. “Who showed it to you?” The blood rushed back into her face—rushed overwhelmingly, as the sense rushed upon her mind that her own words had betrayed her. She struck her hands together in despair. “I never wrote it,” she gasped affrightedly; “I know nothing about it!”

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (42-0086)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my eyes—pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death— there stood Henry Jekyll!

The Picture of Dorian Gray (174-0251)

Oscar Wilde (1890)

The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him stone.

Dracula (345-0352)

Bram Stoker (1897)

She shuddered and was silent, holding down her head on her husband’s breast. When she raised it, his white nightrobe was stained with blood where her lips had touched, and where the thin open wound in the neck had sent forth drops. The instant she saw it she drew back, with a low wail, and whispered, amidst choking sobs.

Dracula (345-0968)

Bram Stoker (1897)

There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more horribly white and wan-looking than ever. Even the lips were white, and the gums seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see in a corpse after a prolonged illness.

The Turn of the Screw (209-0168)

Henry James (1898)

My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them still with her eyes. “Of what other things have you got hold?”

Collected Stories (31-0690)

H. P. Lovecraft (2006)

Then, after a short interval, the form in the corner stirred; and may pitying heaven keep from my sight and sound another thing like that which took place before me. I cannot tell you who he shrieked, or what vistas of unvisitable hells gleamed for a second in the black eyes crazed with fright. I can only say that I fainted, and did not stir till he himself recovered and shook me in his frenzy for someone to keep away the horror and desolation.

Collected Stories (31-3241)

H. P. Lovecraft (2006)

The dreams were meanwhile getting to be atrocious. In the lighter preliminary phase the evil old woman was now of fiendish distinctness, and Gilman knew she was the one who had frightened him in the slums. Her bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin were unmistakable, and her shapeless brown garments were like those he remembered. The expression on her face was one of hideous malevolence and exultation, and when he awaked he could recall a croaking voice that persuaded and threatened. He must meet the Black Man and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate chaos. That was what she said. He must sign the book of Azathoth in his own blood and take a new secret name now that his independent delvings had gone so far. What kept him from going with her and Brown Jenkin and the other to the throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name “Azathoth” in the Necronomicon, and knew it stood for a primal evil too horrible for description.

Collected Stories (31-3201)

H. P. Lovecraft (2006)

That night Gilman saw the violet light again. In his dream he had heard a scratching and gnawing in the partitions, and thought that someone fumbled clumsily at the latch. Then he saw the old woman and the small furry thing advancing toward him over the carpeted floor. The beldame’s face was alight with inhuman exultation, and the little yellow-toothed morbidity tittered mockingly as it pointed at the heavily-sleeping form of Elwood on the other couch across the room. A paralysis of fear stifled all attempts to cry out. As once before, the hideous crone seized Gilman by the shoulders, yanking him out of bed and into empty space. Again the infinitude of the shrieking abysses flashed past him, but in another second he thought he was in a dark, muddy, unknown alley of foetid odors with the rotting walls of ancient houses towering up on every hand.

Conclusions

After mucking about in the paragraphs of these different texts, categorizing words, I don’t think my questions can be answered easily, nor do I think the link between body and horror can be simply explained. On the surface, it often seems that the characters are using their bodies to sense and to express their horror. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Rather, it seems that the most intensely horror-filled passages contain a heightened consciousness of body and there must be more behind that body-consciousness. Whether this proximity of horror words to body words indicates horror of the body, or horror for the body would take further analysis and interpretation. I suspect that the answer lies tangled up in both options.

Monstrosity of the body is certainly an important factor in the Gothic Horror—that’s not a shocking find. Perhaps Woodchipper has failed, in this instance, to teach me anything that I didn’t already suspect. I do think the assortment of paragraphs identified by Woodchipper would give me a great place to start a more intense investigation.

As part of the quest to see how subgenres may have begun to branch off from the Gothic, which is closely related to both my earlier post and Dan’s recent one, I looked at a short list of Gothic novels that might be precursors to Horror.

For this Woodchipper analysis, I decided to limit the number of texts I would compare. (I ran these tests early on, before I was very familiar with woodchipper and at that time I was finding it very confusing to run more than a couple novels at a time.) I wondered if I could find one very typical example of the Gothic Horror and one very typical example of the Gothic non-Horror to see what they looked like side-by-side. I wanted to find the overlap and the divergences, thinking that they might be compared to the divergences Dan found in the runs he was doing simultaneously with Science Fiction. A bonus to this approach was that I would first have to determine if my groups (Gothic and Gothic Horror) even held up in Woodchipper.

First, I ran some tests on a core group of Gothic texts, which our group had established as “most Gothic.”

• The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Vampyre by John Polidori
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

 *The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was also on our list but not yet available in Woodchipper

I ran these texts against each other to get a sense of what Woodchipper would make of the Gothic. I found that the texts overlapped pretty well.

Ultimately, I decided to use Mysteries of Udolpho as my “most Gothic” text because its pattern seemed to most align with the others and also because it fit into my “Gothic non-Horror” category.

Then I chose my Horror subset of the Gothics. In addition to my sub-group’s consensus on what made horror I consulted Amazon and Goodreads, to determine which of our Gothic novels are popularly considered as such. This research led to a short list of Gothic Horror texts.

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Collected Stories of HP Lovecraft
• Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Varney the Vampyre by Thomas Preskett Prest

In my woodchipper runs, I was looking to see if they would align well. I also hoped, of course, to find one text to use as an example of them all.

Related to this runs I made the following observations:

1. Frankenstein is the most divergent of this group. It pulls away largely with what I called its “existential” concerns. (life, death, existence, mind, heart)
2. The Lovecraft collection fits my stereotypes of horror best, according to Woodchipper, but it looks like an exaggeration of the other texts. It has a lot of the same lines, but they go further out. (You have to make sure its dots go on the bottom or you won’t be able to see anything else.)
3. The four that best match are Jekyl/Hyde, Dorian Gray, Varney, and Dracula.

I decided to use Varney the Vampyre as my example of a typical Gothic Horror, so I ran it against The Mysteries of Udolpho. I was not blown away by the results. Varney took some topics a bit further out than Udolpho, but didn’t diverge much beyond that.

So, what the heck, I figured I’d try out H.P. Lovecraft’s collected stories. Perhaps the most extreme and exaggerated Horror of my small collection would tell me something more interesting.

Ah! Well there are some nice divergences. Finally. So in Lovecraft, I have found some potential genre sprouts, as predicted by Moretti in “Trees.” Perhaps further investigation and a closer look at the texts could find more evidence of smaller sprouts–too small for my very limited runs–in Varney, the Vampyre or some of my other Gothic Horrors.

I seem to have learned a lot more from my earlier groupings, of 5 Gothic novels and then of 6 Horror, then from running example Gothic against example Horror. Instead, I learned some of the drawbacks of pitting texts one-on-one. It’s too easy for one text’s idiosyncrasies to take over–you may get some ideas, but you are certainly not going to prove anything.

I have not taken this investigation as far as it will go. In fact, I consider it a short, side adventure. But I’m sharing it because I think it illustrates another approach to using Woodchipper–drawbacks and all.

While trying to use Woodchipper to come up with a definition of the Gothic, I was also interested in looking at Gothic literature as spawning numerous forms of popular literature, namely Mystery, Horror, and Science Fiction. Mystery and Horror, at least from the outset, seem like straightforward extensions of elements already present in the Gothic. Science fiction, on the other hand, branches off in different, and I would argue more interesting, ways.

I derive most of my assumptions and questions from this article. Brantlinger focuses on science fiction’s origins in Gothic literature. Like the Gothic, sci-fi questions the limits of rationalization. Both genres emphasize the sublime, namely fear and wonder, to arouse terror. They also favor subjectivity over objectivity, viewing the nature of the universe as essentially unknowable, and therefore we can only determine our own separate accounts; this theme, especially for the Gothic, comes through its epistolary format.

Most importantly, Gothic and sci-fi both take reason to its extreme limit in order to reveal the point where the rules break down. In both genres, this scenario can only lead to disaster. The difference is that for gothic texts, this disaster usually takes place internally, while in science fiction it becomes external. So, in analyzing my findings, another major topic to watch out for would be interiority versus exteriority, and well as the personal versus the societal.

I ran Frankenstein (considered by many to be the first sci-fi novel) and The Time Machine by Wells (one of the fathers of sci-fi) with other Gothic texts and with each other. I also hope to use Verne (the other father of sci-fi) and Poe, who wrote some of the first sci-fi stories and had a huge influence on the genre. I only have enough space here to focus on a few interesting results. Obviously, running two early science fiction / gothic texts alone against thirty or so gothic texts cannot yield definitive results. However, perhaps in conjunction with my own analysis, Woodchipper could offer a useful lens for observing trends between and within these genres, as well as introducing new questions for future runs.

With this in mind, I’ll present my first run: Frankenstein and Caleb Williams:

While there is a fair amount of overlap, Caleb favors the Crime/Justice topic, and what Kathryn categorized as the “Sublime” (“man,” “life,” “nature,” “character,” “mind”), although this is less clear, while Frankenstein leans more toward the “Existential” (or “Spiritual”) topic (“life,” “death,” “existence,” “mind,” “heart”). Does this address my questions? Not so much. On the one hand, most of these categories leans more toward interiority than exteriority. So, from these results, Frankenstein doesn’t offer much evidence for science fiction’s emphasis on the social and even cosmic. On the other hand, these categories also privilege subjectivity (especially “seemed” in an alternate run), which aligns with both the Gothic and sci-fi. But, again, Frankenstein has a lot in common with Caleb, and while they diverge in certain respects, these differences appear to have more to do with each novel’s own respective foci rather than an indication of genre. Moreover, Caleb’s deep engagement with the political (which Frankenstein also shares) may signify the work as atypical of its genre, although Woodchipper only represents this aspect here through the Crime/Justice category (without specifying the type of justice: personal or societal).

Another important note: while many texts in my runs tend to densely populate certain topics, Frankenstein is comparatively scattered. Does this make Frankenstein harder to pin down and categorize than other Gothic texts, and is that a clue that it shares another genre: science fiction? It’s too difficult to tell, especially when none of the topics here clearly points to science fiction.

Turning to The Time Machine, I ran the text with The Beetle, which contains a few supernatural elements, such as shape-shifting:

The Time Machine was difficult to use because its own terms and jargon—“Time Traveller,” “morlocks,” ect.—clutter the results. In this pairing, however, both texts are concerned with observation and information-gathering. Two topics leave room for ambiguity and subjectivity (“seemed” appears in both). The other, “told,” “asked,” “knew,” “see,” “thought,” alludes to more concrete evidence. Interestingly, this is where the texts overlap the most. Thus, at least from this run, it appears that while The Beetle is interested in all forms of observation, The Time Machine is more concerned with objectivity.

Choosing a random sample passage quickly complicates this tentative conclusion, however.

A section of a passage from The Time Machine's "Concrete Information" topic

The Time Traveller’s privileging of objective reality (“I know it was a dull white”) must yield to his uncertainty (“too fast to see distincly,” “I cannot even say . . .”). In the end, reason gets him nowhere, and he must admit to the unreliability of his senses. This is often what science fiction is all about: the friction between the objective and “scientific” versus the subjective and unknown. Woodchipper can’t really pick up on this, as it can only group common and repeating words together without interpretation.

Another important note: it doesn’t occur here, but the “Cosmic” or “Celestial” (“light, moon, sun, sky, sea”) frequently appears when I run The Time Machine with other texts. Even though Wells’ novel doesn’t deal with spaceflight or space directly, one can see the genre’s fascination with the stars.

Finally, let’s look at the two early science fiction texts together:

Frankenstein appears to have broader concerns than The Time Machine. The former dominates “Justice” and the “Sublime” (with overlap), while the latter stays with the “Cosmic.” However, a new category also appears: “work, science, time, knowledge, life.” I wouldn’t call this the “Science Fiction” category by any means, but does it gesture in that direction? If my results tell me anything at all, it is that separating the gothic from gothic sci-fi is, fittingly, extremely difficult. While Frankenstein branches toward many categories, it appears to have far more in common with Gothic literature than it would science fiction. The Time Machine shies away from the Existential or even the subjective, but as demonstrated there is a lot more going on here not represented in these results alone.

Right now, my questions are: Can Woodchipper distinguish the Gothic from science fiction, and can it recognize sci-fi within the Gothic? Going forward, perhaps Verne and Poe will help illuminate possible trends, but I suspect that only through a juxtaposition with later, non-Gothic science fiction works will a fuller picture present itself.

Brantlinger identifies a trend in more recent science fiction in favor of the rational and “realistic” as opposed to the imaginative. According to Brantlinger, this focus runs counter to science fiction’s origins in the Gothic. At what point, then, if this trend exists at all, did sci-fi cease its critique of the rational and objective and begin to glorify them? Is Woodchipper capable of addressing this question? If so, I’d like to know the answer.