Colour Timeline

Colour timeline

This experiment plots how frequently named colours appear in Gormenghast. Graphs, images, and tables illustrate the diversity of colour words across the novels' chapters and parts. Enumerating these words is simpler than representing them visually.

Place is a collective construction. Statistical methods construct an 'average' place by flattening multiple subjectivities.

Human language privileges human perception. Perception of colour varies (Private) between nonhuman species and humans. Neurological and physiological conditions can also alter human perception of colour.

Future

Sentiment analysis 'measures' mood in text. Analyses of larger corpora could reveal relationships between colour and emotions in literature.2


Footnotes

  1. Heuser, Ryan, Franco Moretti, and Erik Steiner. "The Emotions of London." Literary Lab Pamphlet. Pamphlets of the Stanford Literary Lab. Stanford, CA, US: Stanford University, 2016. https://litlab.stanford.edu/LiteraryLabPamphlet13.pdf.˄


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