engleski

Deities in Big Numbers. A Digital Analysis of the Mythological Apparatus in Three Croatian Neo-Latin Epics

It is well known that Neo-Latin epic, including Christian epic, widely employs the ancient mythological apparatus. The phenomenon has been studied as one of the prominent and most obvious characteristics which the epic genre 'owes' to the antiquity, usually on individual texts. In this paper I am going to present the results of a digital experiment performed on three chronologically distant Christian epics of Croatian Neo-Latin authors (Jacobus Bonus from Dubrovnik, De uita et gestis Christi, 1526 ; Caietanus Vicich from Rijeka, Jesseidos libri XII, 1700 ; Josephus Ciobarnich from Makarska, Dioclias, ms. ante 1846, ed. 1881). The experiment consisted in isolating and analyzing all proper names of classical origin from the total of 26000 verses. Working on large amounts of text and with big numbers, I am trying to gain an ‘objective’ insight into the status of the mythological apparatus in the three poems and draw conclusions on how it was used, in which contexts, how its relative frequency reflects the doctrinal rigor of their authors or the ideological or aesthetic preferences of their respective periods.

digital humanities; neo-Latin epic; distant reading

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