Sentiment analysis in Great Expectations using SEANCE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/h2d.7270Keywords:
digital humanities, literature and transdisciplinarity, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, English literatureAbstract
The use of computational tools in the area of literary studies constitutes fertile ground, as pointed out by several international researches (Moretti, 2008; Rebora, 2023; Sergio Ferreira, 2024), which is still, not withstanding, an area that must be investigated further in lusophone studies. The current paper had as its objective to add to these efforts, making use of the technique of sentiment analysis, specifically through the SEANCE tool, for application on the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (2024). The research sought to verify the relevance of a significant representative of computational tools (Rebora, 2023) to the study of the literary work in consideration, as well as to launch an exploratory investigation of the results to be obtained. Starting from this comparison of the a posteriori results extracted through computational means to the a priori subjective conceptions of researchers of the novel, it was possible to reach the goals that had been drawn out. The results confirmed certain expectations of the subjective analysis, and also indicated potential pathways to future studies. In this manner, the current paper adds to the efforts of expanding the acting of literary studies within the larger field of the digital humanities.
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