A Tool for Literary Studies: Intertextual Distance and Tree Classification

Abstract

How to measure proximities and oppositions in large text corpora? Intertextual distance provides a simple and interesting solution. Its properties make it a good tool for text classification, and especially for tree-analysis which is fully presented and discussed here. In order to measure the quality of this classification, two indices are proposed. The method presented provides an accurate tool for literary studies—as is demonstrated by applying it to two areas of French literature, Racine's tragedies and an authorship attribution experiment.