What’s Syuzhet?
In the Spring of 2015, Matthew Jockers, Associate Professor English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, wrote a software package called Syuzhet that purported to automatically graph the emotional highs and lows of a text. He claimed in a blog post that all novels had one of six or seven graph shapes. I tested the code and discovered some flaws in its programming and methodology, and so I wrote a blog post responding to his claims that prompted a larger conversation about testing digital tools, interdisciplinary, and validating data in the digital humanities. We wrote multiple blog posts responding to each other and to others in the field. Eileen Clancy chronicled the entire conversation with Storify: see the two Storify stories here and here. My three Syuzhet blog posts are below.
Blog Posts:
“Problems with the Syuzhet Package.” March 2, 2015.
“Continuing the Syuzhet Discussion.” March 7, 2015.
“Why Syuzhet Doesn’t Work and How We Know.” March 30, 2015.
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