Novel Perceptions: towards an inclusive canon

新颖的看法：走向包容性的正典

• 批准号: AH/V00073X/1
• 负责人: Sebastian Groes
• 金额: $ 30.54万
• 依托单位: University of Wolverhampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FV00073X%2F1
• 关键词: Novel; Perceptions; towards; inclusive; canon

Reading is important. We have to be able to read all kinds of texts to manage our way through life. From an early age we all are also instilled with the idea that we have to read and enjoy high brow literature and 'the canon'. Literary prizes and their winners receive much media attention. However, literary scholars are hard-pressed to explain what kind of books deserve such a literary prize or a place in the literary canon. Until recently, cultural sociologists were convinced that attributing literary value to a book has nothing to do with the quality of the book. Value is attributed based on sociological processes, such as prizes and academic attention for a title or an author. In the digital age, this changed. In the highly interdisciplinary and innovative Dutch Computational Humanities project The Riddle of Literary Quality (2012-2019), scholars selected 400 contemporary novels and combined computational measurements with the opinions of readers gathered in a large survey. They were able to show that literary value for a large part correlates with linguistic features of the novels (use of words, sentences, etc.), but is also influenced by the perceived genre of the novel and the perceived gender of the author - to name but two things. The scholars uncovered unconscious biases in readers: for instance, women's fiction was consistently rated less literary than literary fiction written by men. They see these biases as a reflection of inequalities in Dutch society and found that reporting on their research helped to raise awareness about these inequalities and furthermore inspired changes in reading patterns and in views on the literary canon.Novel Perceptions (NOPE) seeks to replicate the Dutch research in the UK. We will select 400 recent novels and do a large survey asking readers for their opinions. We will make use of methods from computational literary studies such as stylometry to analyse the novels. Using quantitative analysis from cultural sociology, we will analyse the opinions of the UK readers of these novels. And we will combine both methodologies to explore correlations, making visible any unconscious biases in the UK reading public. We will extend the Dutch project with additional surveys in which we will analyse readers' preference of classic and historical versus newer, non-canonised texts; the volume of novels that readers consume; novels they finish and don't. We ask people to reread novels they read in the past to understand how memory operates. The aim of the project is to analyse, but the results will quite naturally lead to raising awareness and to challenging established reading habits. In turn, this will help us promote a more diverse, inclusive reading 'diet'. To reach these aims, we need as many participants for our surveys as possible. We are very happy that the BBC engagement project "Novels That Shaped Our World" (NOSOW, seehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/the-novels-that-shaped-our-world) provides a platform for our research. This project aims to stimulate inclusive and diverse reading cultures, literacy, library use and to celebrate 300 years of the English language novel whilst provoking discussions about a diverse, socially-inclusive twenty-first century canon. From January 2020, the public will be stimulated to read and think about these novels through a host of activities. People are rewarded for engaging with this survey by receiving recommendations for non-classic novels that they will (probably) like but are less well-known. Through these surveys we will draw in participants for our other surveys. The visibility of the BBC project will be essential for us to collect as many readers' opinions as possible for our data collection. All surveys have already been developed. Our grant application asks for funding to analyse the results, disseminate our findings, and to write up our results.

阅读很重要。我们必须能够阅读各种文本来管理我们的生活方式。从很小的时候起，我们就被灌输了这样一种观念，即我们必须阅读和享受高雅文学和经典。文学奖及其获奖者受到媒体的极大关注。然而，文学学者很难解释什么样的书值得获得这样的文学奖或在文学经典中占有一席之地。直到最近，文化社会学家还确信，将文学价值归因于一本书与这本书的质量无关。价值是基于社会学过程的，例如一个书名或作者的获奖和学术关注度。在数字时代，这种情况发生了变化。在高度跨学科和创新性的荷兰计算人文项目--文学质量之谜(2012-2019年)中，学者们选择了400本当代小说，并将计算方法与大规模调查中收集的读者意见结合起来。他们能够证明，文学价值在很大程度上与小说的语言特征(词语、句子等的使用)相关，但也受到小说感知的体裁和作者感知的性别的影响--仅举两例。学者们发现了读者中的无意识偏见：例如，女性小说的文学性一直低于男性写的文学小说。他们认为这些偏见反映了荷兰社会的不平等，并发现报道他们的研究有助于提高人们对这些不平等的认识，进而促使阅读模式和对文学经典的看法发生变化。Novel Options(NOPE)试图在英国复制荷兰的研究。我们将选择400部最近出版的小说，并进行一次大规模的调查，征求读者的意见。我们将利用计算文学研究中的方法，如文体学来分析小说。我们将运用文化社会学的定量分析方法，分析英国读者对这些小说的看法。我们将结合这两种方法来探索相关性，让英国读者看到任何无意识的偏见。我们将通过额外的调查来扩展荷兰的项目，在这些调查中，我们将分析读者对经典和历史文本的偏好，以及读者对新的、非经典文本的偏好；读者阅读的小说数量；他们读完和没有读完的小说。我们要求人们重读他们过去读过的小说，以了解记忆是如何运作的。该项目的目的是进行分析，但结果自然会提高人们的意识，并挑战既定的阅读习惯。反过来，这将帮助我们促进更多样化、更具包容性的阅读“饮食”。为了实现这些目标，我们需要尽可能多的参与者参与我们的调查。我们非常高兴英国广播公司参与的项目《塑造我们世界的小说》(NOSOW，seehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/the-novels-that-shaped-our-world))为我们的研究提供了一个平台。该项目旨在促进包容性和多样化的阅读文化、扫盲和图书馆使用，并庆祝英语小说300周年，同时引发关于21世纪具有社会包容性的多样化正典的讨论。从2020年1月起，将通过一系列活动激发公众对这些小说的阅读和思考。参与这项调查的人会得到奖励，他们会收到推荐他们(可能)喜欢但不太知名的非经典小说。通过这些调查，我们将为我们的其他调查吸引参与者。BBC项目的可见性对我们收集数据时收集尽可能多的读者意见至关重要。所有的调查都已经完成了。我们的拨款申请需要资金来分析结果，传播我们的发现，并写下我们的结果。