SUBJECTIVE STYLOMETRY is a website/blog devoted to the subjectively-driven analysis and investigation of auctorial/poetical style across all genres of literature.
Not abandoning or denying in any way the excellent work progressing in objective, statistical, mathematical, and algorithmical discoveries in stylometrics, Subjective Stylometry COMPLEMENTS these studies by figuring in some novel concepts and applications using the insights and varied expertise of literary and linguistic scholars in the intelligent and inspired “tagging” of texts for analysis.
Such analyses are dependent upon close readings, rhetorical insightfulness, awareness of intertextual relationships, familiarities with genres, and, in general, an eclectic array of talents and varied angles of critical approach brought by the scholar to the text.
Such investigations lend themselves to what we ought properly call “Computer Assisted Literary Criticism” (CALC for short) as a supplement to—but also making use of—the more automated and linguistically-dominated studies of traditional stylometric analysis.
SUBJECTIVE STYLOMETRY is a site conceived, originated, and designed/maintained by Frank Coffman, Prof. of English and Journalism at Rock Valley College, Rockford, Illinois. His main emphases in literary studies have been in 19th c. and Modern British and American Literature with special foci on Popular Imaginative Literature across the genres of Adventure, Detection & Mystery, Fantasy, Horror & the Supernatural, and Science Fiction. He is a member of the Robert E. Howard United Press Association (REHupa), the founding member of the online amateur press association REHeapa (the Robert E. Howard Electronic Amateur Press Association), and has published Robert E. Howard: Selected Poems, as well as several essays on pulp and “pop” literature in general. Other special interests include: J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, and others.
The purpose of this site is to explain, expose, and expand the concept of the subjective scholarly “tagging” of texts and the enhanced analysis of literary style—both through Computer Assisted Literary Criticism [C.A.L.C.] and inspired, informed, and intuitive insights brought to bear upon such texts from many and variously eclectic critical perspectives—as a complement and supplement to traditional stylometric analysis.
This humanized counterpart to the statistically- and linguistically-oriented traditional methods of Stylometric Analysis brings scholarly expertise in rhetorical principles, narratological concepts, literary genres and traditions, and intertextual awareness to the enhancement and aid of the more scientifically methodical and largely mathematical and algorithmic work of stylometrists thus far.
CONTACT INFO: statisticalstylo@pobox.com
subjective stylometry 