To do full justice to Romanticism as a periodic category [...], one must de facto be a comparatist —Ben Hutchinson1

Introduction

The Romantic Period Poetry Archive, or RPPA [Listen] for short, is a new open access digital platform of global Romantic-period poetry. Global here in the sense of Felicity Nussbaum's definition of the "Global 18th century", namely as a spatially and conceptually expanded paradigm in which dialogue and exchange rather than influence and reception are the dominant categories.2 RPPA comprises a full-text poetry database and an open scholarship platform. It embraces both traditional modes of scholarly research and output, such as the creation of scholarly editions, and digital modes of research and publication, such as computationally-augmented analysis, visualizations, network analysis, knowledge modelling, and more.

Approach

Comparative in nature, RPPA conceptualizes Romanticism as a global, deeply interconnected phenomenon. It embraces a Romantic Weltliteratur by bringing well- and lesser-known poets, their poems and contexts from all parts of the world into conversation, and thus encourages the telling of bigger stories. This “zooming out” not only brings texts, authors, languages, and cultures into conversation, but also highlights the (frequently non-linear) modes of transmission, circulation, and reception of literature (understood here in global terms as the expressions of a culture in a variety of forms). These matters will be considered alongside the conversations the texts enter into with each other, directly, or much more frequently, indirectly.

Scope

RPPA participates in movements that aim to address issues of scale in academic Romanticism by expanding the Romantic literary canon. Unrestrained by the limitations of traditional print publications, RPPA comprises various literary and non-literary genres of Romanticism from all nations throughout the long Romantic century.3 As a networked effort, RPPA links the literary practices, interrelations, and contexts of Romantic-period poetry. It connects these nodes reflexively as well as to various internal and external contexts.

Features

  • RPPA will assemble an extensive and open-ended archive of TEI/XML-encoded full-text poems (both original and in translation) and their contexts;
  • RPPA is transdisciplinary and intermedial, transcending literature, and embracing wider cultural production;
  • RPPA considers Romanticism in global, transnational contexts and foregrounds its multi-lingualism and -culturalism;
  • RPPA adopts a positive conceptualization of translation as the “closest” form of reading, one that many Romantics considered a vital part of their literary labours;
  • RPPA facilitates and supports comparison as a method by providing tools that situate Romantic-period poetry in its international and interdisciplinary contexts;
  • RPPA fosters collaboration and participation to turn obstacles to the study of global Romantic-period poetry (such as “distant” reading and, unavoidably, limited contextual knowledge) into opportunities for learning;
  • RPPA encourages new research into global Romantic-period poetry and showcases ways to integrate RPPA into the curriculum;
  • RPPA incorporates digital humanities approaches as a form of comparative literary study.

Implementation

RPPA employs digital methods from the multilingual Digital Humanities and the Semantic Web.

  • Multilingual DH: A combination of ML/AI- and NLP-approaches is our starting point for the detection of formal poetic features and points of contact more generally (shared poetic genres and devices, semantic features such as motifs, themes, plots, topics, characters, and types of intertextuality) within and across literatures. It is however through inviting input from and seeking collaboration with domain experts from various traditions, that we hope to address some of the main challenges of "distant reading".
  • Semantic Web: RPPA is built on the Semantic Web, it embraces Linked Open Data (LOD) standards and methodologies. RPPA is powered by an ontologically underpinned, ever-expanding knowledge base called PRISMS, drawing on a number of domain-specific ontologies (CIDOC-CRM, OntoPoetry, and INTRO). This shared framework provides a unified mechanism for the cross-linguistic representation of the poems while maintaining the ability to describe them adequately within their cultures and poetic traditions. It also facilitates the modelling of poetic networks, circles, and schools.

Presentations

Timeline

RPPA is a 5-year, independently-funded research project. It will run from late 2020-2025. As with other projects conceived as long-term archival endeavours, all research outputs of the project will be preserved and made accessible indefinitely. RPPA is designed to be a networked effort: expressions of interest to connect with and participate in the project are welcome at any time. As of late 2021, RPPA has adopted rapid prototyping and open development methodologies. The project phase remains unchanged and will end in 2025, when the project will have reached beta stage. Regular updates about work packages, milestones, and the overall progress of the project will be posted on this website.

Outcome

The expected outcome of this project is a fuller understanding, appreciation, and engagement with the poetry of the global Romantic period. As a project, RPPA prioritizes the idea of “wholeness” of an archival approach over analytical accounts of established narratives. Wholeness not in the sense of one grand or better narrative or history, but rather in acknowledging, collecting, and aggregating many individual stories in one bigger space. A space for the exploration of new contexts and the construction of new global texts4 that cast a fresh light on the seemingly familiar. This project provides that space.

1 Hutchinson, Ben. Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: OUP, 2018. 22.
2 Felicity A. Nussbaum's concept of "critical global studies" was first introduced in her edited collection The Global Eighteenth Century, Baltimore and London: JHUP, 2003, 1. This research focuses on Romanticism as a period in international literary history, i.e. a global artistic phenomenon.
3 The "Romantic century" was first proposed for the study of British Romanticism by William Galperin and Susan Wolfson in their NASSR 1996 conference paper "'Romanticism' in Crisis: The Romantic Century". For the global context of this project, the qualifier long has been added.
4 The construct of a source text with all of its contexts was termed "global text" by Angelika Corbineau-Hoffmann in her book Kontextualität, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2017, 242.

News/Updates

The #RomanticPeriodPoetryArchive sits at the crossroads of #ComparativeLiterature and the #DigitalHumanities. It facilitates the collaborative #contextualization of #poems on any expression level (full-text, facsimile, recording, ...) romanticperiodpoetry.org #Romanticism #DH

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— Alexander Huber (@c18ah.bsky.social) March 18, 2025 at 6:34 PM

Very pleased to announce the first in a series of updates to the #RomanticPeriodPoetryArchive as we approach public beta! www.romanticperiodpoetry.org Stay tuned for new features, enhancements, and expanded content. #GlobalRomanticism #RPPA #poetry #DigitalHumanities #SemanticWeb #KnowledgeGraph

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— Alexander Huber (@c18ah.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 2:14 PM

Excited to announce the #RomanticPeriodPoetryArchive now holds 1,058 poems by 219 poets (with a total of 610 poets from 71 countries). The ontology-driven #RPPA knowledge base interconnects Romantic-period poems globally. www.romanticperiodpoetry.org #DayofDH2024 #GlobalRomanticism #SemanticWeb

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— Alexander Huber (@c18ah.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 12:42 PM

The #RomanticPeriodPoetryArchive website has been updated with details of two presentations given at workshops organized by Liverpool and Oxford universities. www.romanticperiodpoetry.org #RPPA #contextuality #Romanticism #poetry #GlobalRomanticism #DigitalHumanities #SemanticWeb

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— Alexander Huber (@c18ah.bsky.social) September 6, 2024 at 4:57 PM

Delighted to have been invited to participate in the 'Fugitive Poetry in 18th-century Europe' workshop. I will be speaking about the #RomanticPeriodPoetryArchive, a new #DigitalHumanities project exploring the poetry of the global Romantic period using #SemanticWeb technologies.

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— Alexander Huber (@c18ah.bsky.social) April 8, 2024 at 4:16 PM

Very pleased to announce the adoption of the #INTRO ontology to model contextuality in the poetry corpus of the #RomanticPeriodPoetryArchive. Read more about the project here: www.romanticperiodpoetry.org #RPPA #intertextuality #Romanticism #poetry #GlobalRomanticism #c19th #digitalhumanities #DH

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— Alexander Huber (@c18ah.bsky.social) November 6, 2023 at 4:32 PM