Computational Resonance: Modelling Thomas Mann’s Early Novellas

Abstract

"in Comparative Literature, relations and interactions are not only the main focus of interpretation, but also play hermeneutic roles as impetus and techniques for transformative insight. By interrelating different disciplinary domains, comparatists strive towards formulating alternative models of relationality and developing different practices of reading relationally.... media and computation - namely, the malleability of digital media and the performativity, unambiguity, and iterativity of computational processes - enable particular modulations and practices of resonant interpretation. The resonant potential of computational approaches to literature is linked to the particular deformative capacities of computational processes and digital media. The malleability of digital media and the performativity, unambiguity, and iterativity of computational processes mean that digitized material can be repeatedly deformed and reformed through computational procedures that perform the exact processes they describe. In computational approaches, interpretation thus relies on how the physical integrity of the texts, the strictures that usually underpin their (typo)graphical organization, is radically disturbed and rearranged according to new, computational principles of organization."