Computational Literary Studies

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Overview

Computational Literary Studies uses methods such as stylometry, topic modeling, semantic embeddings, and character or concept networks to study literature across languages, periods, and large corpora. These approaches help researchers trace changes in style and meaning, compare narrative structures, and find possible sources or intertextual links for closer reading. Large language models are increasingly used to annotate and evaluate texts and to study generated fiction, with benchmarks testing tasks such as poetic comprehension and authorship detection. A central challenge is making computational measurements reliable and interpretable: models can miss context, genre conventions, and culturally specific meanings, so expert validation and careful links between measurements and literary claims remain essential.

Latest papers

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49 papers5 papers in the last four weeks, up 67% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Critic's Eye: Review-Grounded Graph Reasoning for Long-Form Motif Discovery

    Oct 26, 2026Xinyu Sun, Zhangyue Yin, Xinyi Ju +1Computational Literary StudiesGraph Reasoning

    College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Fudan University · Shanghai Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information Processing

  2. Crossing the Gender Binary: Modelling Gendered Reference in Science Fiction and General Fiction

    Oct 13, 2026Yuxuan Liu, Haim Dubossarsky, Ruth AhnertComputational Literary Studies

    School of the Arts, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS, London, United Kingdom · School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS, London, United Kingdom · Cambridge Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge, 2 Trumpington Street, CB2 1QA, Cambridge, United Kingdom

  3. Beyond Model Bias: Cross-Entropy Based Rankings in Literary and Academic Texts Remain Stable across Small Language Models

    Oct 12, 2026Ankit Bhattacharjee, Indrasabarna Hari, Krityapriya Bhaumik +2Language ModelingComputational Literary Studies

    Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India · Asutosh College, University of Calcutta, India

  4. Large Language Models, Machine-Assisted Cultural Analytics, and the Agentic Turn

    Oct 8, 2026Andres KarjusLLM AgentsComputational Social Science

    Tallinn University; Estonian Business School; University of Tartu

  5. Molecules of a Story: Community Detection in PMI-weighted Narrative Networks

    Oct 5, 2026Kasper Fyhn, Rebekah BagliniComputational Literary Studies

    Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, Aarhus University · TEXT - Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text, Aarhus University · Center for Humanities Computing, Aarhus University

  6. Retrieving Biblical Intertextual References in Karen Blixen's Seven Gothic Tales

    Sep 28, 2026András Kovács, Alexander Conroy, Daniel Hershcovich +1Computational Literary StudiesLexical Retrieval

    Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark · Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

  7. When Victorian Becomes a Prompt: Literary Periodization as a Generative Constraint in 100 AI-Generated Novels

    Sep 8, 2026Mehdy Sedaghat PayamComputational Literary StudiesControllable Text Generation

    Independent Scholar

  8. Syntactic Patterns and Stylistic Functions in Narrative Prose: A Rule-Based and Machine-Learning Approach

    Sep 7, 2026Stefana JanicijevicComputational Literary StudiesStylometry

  9. How LLMs Build Fictional Worlds: Setting and Narrative Space in AI-Generated Creative Storytelling

    Sep 2, 2026Katrin Rohrbacher, Björn Nieth, Emmanuelle Salin +2Computational Literary StudiesText Generation

    The Text and Language Lab, Department of Digital Humanities and Social Studies (DHSS), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany · Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering (AIBE), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), Munich, Germany +3

  10. Pair-Level Essay-Scale Republication and Reuse from Fragmented Historical Text Reuse: A Workflow Study on Eighteenth-Century Books and Newspapers

    Aug 27, 2026Ke Shu, Kira Hinderks, Eetu Mäkelä +1Rule-Based ClassificationHistorical Document Analysis

    University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

  11. Do Large Language Models Perform Well on Comprehending Poetic Logic in Modern Chinese Poetry?

    Aug 22, 2026Tian Lan, Shanshan Wang, Zehua Duo +4LLM EvaluationComputational Literary Studies

    Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University · NLP2CT Lab, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Macau · College of Computer Science, Inner Mongolia University

  12. The Plot Thins: Uniformity and Linearity in Literary Summaries

    Aug 18, 2026Rebecca M. M. Hicke, Sil Hamilton, David Mimno +1Text SummarizationComputational Literary Studies

    Computer Science Department, Cornell University · Information Science Department, Cornell University · School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University

  13. Constructing Parallel Multidimensional Chromatic Lexicons for Corpus-Assisted Analysis of Russian and English Texts

    Aug 3, 2026Larisa NikitinaComputational Literary StudiesCorpus Linguistics

    Faculty of Languages and Linguistics Universiti Malaya Malaysia

  14. Detecting Experiential Intertextuality Across Migration Routes: Beyond Surface Similarity in French Narratives

    Jul 31, 2026Sakayo Toadoum Sari, Nelly Robin, Michelle Auzanneau +5Computational Literary Studies

    1CRIL, CNRS – Université d’Artois, France · 2CEPED, Université Paris Cité, France · 3EDA, Université Paris Cité, France

  15. Creative Transformation in Literary Texts: Modelling Change Across Representational Levels

    Jul 30, 2026Ioana-Roxana Boriceanu, Liviu P. DinuComputational Literary StudiesComputational Creativity

    Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science · University of Bucharest, Romania · Human Language Technologies Research Center

  16. Beyond Similarity: Grounded Agentic Extraction and Expert-Adjudicated Evaluation of Intertextuality in Classical Chinese Histories

    Jul 30, 2026Zhaoji Wang, Wanyu Si, Jun WangHistorical Document AnalysisComputational Literary Studies

    Department of Information Management, Peking University, Beijing, China · Research Center for Digital Humanities, Peking University, Beijing, China

  17. Theatre Chapbooks At Scale: A Statistical Comparative Analysis of Typography

    Jul 29, 2026Diego Belzarena, Seginus Mowlavi, Paula Casariego Castiñeira +3Historical Document AnalysisComputational Literary Studies

    UDELAR, CB · Université Paris-Saclay, ENS Paris-Saclay, Centre Borelli, France · CB +8

  18. Automatic Thematic Indexing of Large Literary Corpora: A Machine Learning Approach to Voltaire's Complete Works

    Jul 10, 2026Miguel Arana-Catania, Gillian Pink, Glenn RoeComputational Literary StudiesMulti-Label Classification

    University of Oxford, UK

  19. From Gentlemen to Frontiermen: Masculine Formations in English-Language Fiction (1771--1930)

    Jul 3, 2026Rong WangComputational Literary Studies

    University of Tuebingen

  20. Story Operators: Decomposing the Original →\to Sequel Transformation in Embedding Space

    Jun 24, 2026W. Frederick ZimmermanComputational Literary Studies

    Nimble Books LLC

  21. Three Buddhist Vocabularies: Computational Stylometry of the English Pali Canon across Sutta, Vinaya, and Abhidhamma

    Jun 24, 2026Joy BoseComputational Literary StudiesZipf's Law

    Independent Researcher, Bengaluru, India

  22. Predicting Poets' Origins from Verse: A Computational Analysis of Regional Linguistic Fingerprints in the Complete Tang Poems

    Jun 23, 2026Chi-Sheng Chen, Hung-Yun LiuComputational Literary Studies

    Harvard University · University of Washington

  23. AI as a Tool for Simulation-Based Experiments in Literary Studies

    Jun 1, 2026Matthew WilkensComputational Literary StudiesControllable Text Generation

    Department of Information Science Cornell University

  24. GraphLit: Learning Text-Enriched Dynamic Character Network Representations for Literary Study

    May 27, 2026Gaspard Michel, Elena V. Epure, Romain Hennequin +2Computational Literary StudiesHeterogeneous GNNs

    Deezer Research, Paris, France · IDIAP, Martigny, Switzerland · Loria, Nancy, France +1

  25. A Fine-Tuned BERT Classifier for Personal-Letter Titles in Late-Ming and Early-Qing Collected Works

    May 21, 2026Queenie LuoHistorical Document AnalysisComputational Literary Studies

    Harvard University

  26. QOuLiPo: What a quantum computer sees when it reads a book

    May 13, 2026Christophe JurczakComputational Literary Studies

    Quantonation, Dallas, TX, USA

  27. SAGE: Hierarchical LLM-Based Literary Evaluation through Ontology-Grounded Interpretive Dimensions

    May 8, 2026Tianyu Wang, Nianjun ZhouComputational Literary StudiesLLM Evaluation

    Mercy University, Math & Computer Science Department · Dobbs Ferry, NY, USA · IBM T.J. Watson Research Center +1

  28. From graphemic dependence to lexical structure: a Markovian perspective on Dante's Commedia

    Apr 24, 2026Angelo Maria SabatiniComputational Literary StudiesMarkov Chains

    The BioRobotics Institute Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Pisa, Italy

  29. Markov reads Pushkin, again: A statistical journey into the poetic world of Evgenij Onegin

    Apr 22, 2026Angelo Maria SabatiniComputational Literary StudiesMarkov Models

    The BioRobotics Institute Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna Pisa, Italy

  30. Rank-Turbulence Delta and Interpretable Approaches to Stylometric Delta Metrics

    Apr 21, 2026Dmitry Pronin, Evgeny KazartsevComputational Literary StudiesStylometry

    HSE University