Social Networks and Pre-Modern Literature 1300-1600

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Literary criticism has long sought to understand medieval and early modern texts through their social situations and has often been interested in social networks in its efforts to do so. This work on networks has largely proceeded, however, without relying on network theory. Social Networks and Pre-Modern Literature seeks to unlock the potential of a newly interdisciplinary approach to social networks for the understanding of literary texts.Network theory has flourished in several disciplines in the last decade, including sociology, mathematics, cellular biology, ecology, economics, and public policy. Developments in network theory offer new ways of identifying, describing and analysing the social networks that carried literary texts or that are embedded in their imagined worlds. These concepts, for instance, allow us clearly to distinguish between hubs (persons in a network who are highly connected, that is, possess 'high degree') and nodes of high 'betweenness' (persons included more often than others in the network's shortest paths between nodes). A 'hinge' between different groups in a network might not be a hub but might nonetheless have high betweenness, reflecting their capacity to bridge weakly connected groups by virtue of contact with hubs within those groups. Network theory also gives us tools to measure connectedness by varied criteria (which determine what counts as a tie between nodes) and 'time-resolved' studies increasingly prompt us to attend to the temporality and dynamism of social networks.Our main work will be to use network modelling to analyse the narratives and circulation of literary texts, especially chivalric romances and the Robin Hood tradition, in the period 1300-1600 in Britain. Two workshops will generate new interpretative methods and new readings with the help of concepts that continue to take shape in network theory. In what ways, we will ask, do pre-modern literary texts match or diverge from the findings and observations of modern network theory in imagining social structures and relations? Robin Hood, for instance, might be read as a figure who recuperates the gift-based modes of exchange of elite networks by sundering them from those networks' ordinary places. Tracing ties in Malory's Arthurian stories, meanwhile, might help a researcher to think about how (and how successfully) Malory's knights act as hubs or as bridges between political centres and more remote groups. We can ask whether romances are sensitive to the homophily or attraction of similarity-the 'groupishness'-that lies behind clustering in social networks and, if so, how they represent and value it. It will be vital for participants to scrutinize the divergence between historical and textual social worlds and its implications for network analysis of literary texts. Which properties of social networks do the invariably simplified networks of romances privilege and which do they occlude or distort?The involvement of an interactive, community-embedded museum in the project adds further potential for novel outcomes and impact. Focusing on long-established stories (Robin Hood and King Arthur's knights), researchers and The Story Museum's Learning and Participation team will develop a project targeted at school teachers and pupils to promote ways of renewing and recreating the meanings of these centuries-old narratives and to inspire story-based learning. Friendship is a potential core theme and the Story Museum project will focus on theatrical, improvisational and learner-participatory engagement with its tales. Our workshops will also develop research to be published in scholarly articles freely available to the public.