Abstract
Research on changes in Shaw's rhetoric inMrs. Warren's Profession, Major Barbara, andHeartbreak House led me to a heuristic for gaining literary critical control over computer output. This essay describes the eleven-step process: stepping away from the data, stating first premises, developing a working hypothesis, classifying computer-sorted data, marking implicit literary sub-structures, collecting sub-structural data into tables, applying earlier statistical observations, choosing parts for detailed analysis, designing a visual method for representing the analysis, presenting segment by segment analysis of the selected data, and making larger descriptive generalizations. While describing this heuristic, the essay also reports on the Shaw research.
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Rosanne G. Potter is an Associate Professor in English at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Her main research interest is in computer analysis of dramatic texts and in statistically supported assertions about how dramatic rhetoric works. Her major publications include essays inCHum, Style, Modern Drama, Richard W. Bailey'sComputing in the Humanities, and an edited collection, Literary Computing and Literary Criticism: Theoretical and Practical Essays on Theme and Rhetoric (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).
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Potter, R.G. From literary output to literary criticism: Discovering Shaw's rhetoric. Comput Hum 23, 333–340 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02176638
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02176638