Networks

The Networks view is an approximation of contextuality as a theory of space. It facilitates the exploration of the RPPA knowledge base in form of a network graph and aims to strike a balance between the necessities of spatial and temporal situatedness of contextuality and the freedom to explore formal, semantic, poetic, as well as network-analytical measures in the underlying knowledge base. Contextuality supplements the temporal axis of textual reception with contextual connectivity in space. The spatial dimension allows for a full appreciation of a text's complexities in a space that connects all parts of a text among themselves and shows exits and pathways to its contexts. Only in this space can a real interpretation of a text unfold: as texts invite dialogue and contextualization, the interpretative space grows with it.

Methodology

Contextuality is spatially and temporally situated, meaning that each context carries place and moment that shape interpretation. In RPPA this requires:

• Spatial anchoring — linking contexts to specific locations (birthplaces, performance sites, publication or translation events);
• Temporal anchoring — recording dates, periods, and historical horizons that affect meaning;
• Integrated modelling — representing contexts as graph nodes with spatial and temporal attributes so analyses can traverse both dimensions.

Contexts themselves have a historical place and function that is linked to in the space of the context, thus the text enters this realm of the contexts' universe while at the same time the context transforms our understanding, reading, representation, and overal model of the text. All contextuality is therfore minimally bi-directional, it facilitates a spatial movement between text and context, i.e. the text's place in the context's reach through time and space is just as important as the work it performs in the text.

This temporal/spatial expansion historicizes a text as a ‘global text‘, i.e. contexts embed texts in multidimensional spaces and connect texts more broadly via shared contexts. As such, the global text evolves from the countless recontextualizations of the text (every reading adds a layer to this space), and hence serves as a representative model of the text in its contextualized state, it extends and ultimately replaces the textual discourse with an open-ended, context-based network, or graph.

Graph display

The RPPA knowledge graph can be explored in any user-defined direction. Nodes can be added to the network using either the graph search function or by expanding existing nodes by adding their connected (incoming and outgoing) nodes. Nodes can also be dragged to change the graph layout, and the graph as a whole can be zoomed in and out of to reposition the graph display.

The nodes in the RPPA knowledge graph are coded by colour and shape to indicate their class (type) and ontological contexts. Nodes labels comprise the class of node, followed by a brief descriptive label; edge labels show the property label only. An overview of a node's properties is displayed next to the node on hover and in the Graph information panel on the right when clicking on a node.

Double click on works, expressions, contexts, actualizations, or interrelations at any time to bring up detailed content views.

Graph traversal

On right-click (or click and hold) in the graph display, a context wheel is displayed with these options:

• – add incoming/outgoing connections (when on a node)
• – undo last change
• – redo last change
• – log node

Individual selected nodes can be deleted with the delete key. Press Ctrl + Z/Y to undo/redo any changes to the graph.

Ontologies and vocabularies

Contextuality is not limited to intertextual or intermedial relations — it also encompasses social, material, spatial and institutional factors that shape how texts are produced, transmitted and read. RPPA models these dimensions using a mix of established ontologies and project-specific vocabularies to ensure consistent contextualization and linked-data interoperability.

• Core semantic standards: Dublin Core, FOAF, schema.org and SKOS for metadata and concept organisation;
• Geographic and temporal: GeoNames, WGS84 and ISO date/time vocabularies for places and time-spans;
• Linguistic and classification: ISO language codes and SKOS-based thesauri for language and domain classification;
• RPPA ontologies: project-specific RDF models (drawing on the CIDOC-CRM, POSTDATA, and INTRO ontologies) describing nodes (works, expressions, agents, contexts), properties and contextual relations; exposed via a SPARQL endpoint for querying and graph export.

RPPA context vocabularies

To support the modelling of intertextual, intratextual, and typological contexts, RPPA has produced a number of SKOS vocabulaires drawing on established dictionaries, encyclopedias, and glossaries from among others literature, poetry, art, and music. Below is a complete list of the vocabularies currently available for classifying the contextualizations of intertextual and intermedial contextuality in RPPA. The task of creating and offering high-quality domain-specific vocabularies in support of RPPA's contextualization effort is ongoing. We will be adding new vocabularies periodically, including but not limited to art, music, theatre, sciences, history, religion, philosophy, and mythology. Please feel free to suggest additional vocabularies to be included. Clicking on any of the terms/concepts below will show them in their contextualized form in the Networks view.

These vocabularies allow RPPA to support rich, multi-dimensional contextualizations, enable graph-based discovery, and facilitate reuse across digital humanities tools.

Open Scholarship

Thanks to the nature of Romanticism as a global phenomenon, reading global Romanticism will more often than not be reading in translation (i.e. distantly). Additionally, ‘global texts‘ are 'open texts', they invite readers to participate in their creation. Finally, a database of contextuality like RPPA's constitutes a corpus of a higher order (a network) that is in itself a valuable object of study beyond the concrete work contexts perform in the texts. Taken together, it is only through collaboration and participation that all of these challenges can be addressed:

• subject and domain expertise of poetic traditions within and across national literatures;
• comparatist approaches to look beyond the artistic aspects to the expression of broader literary and cultural trends, mapping it onto the evolution of forms, genres, and ideas/motifs;
• computational approaches from ontological modelling to network analysis and mapping approaches.

Maps

The historical map used in the visualization is John Arrowsmith's The World, on Mercators Projection (London: J. Arrowsmith, 1844). While the original map centres on the Pacific region, it is Western/Northern-centric in other ways, not least with regard to its place of manufacture and its Mercartor projection. For geo-referencing purposes the map has been aligned with the Web Mercator projection, the de facto standard for maps on the web.

Poets are shown at their place of birth, unless it is unknown or the poet is generally associated with a country other than their birth country, in which case they are shown at the country's geographical centre. Images of the poets have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Mapping global Romantic-period poetry

Primarily conceived as a visual access point at the moment, our aim is to use maps and mapping as an analytical tool that facilitates multi-perspectival approaches, mitigates ambiguity and uncertainty, helps to consider and appreciate the evolution of national literatures and literary spaces alongside the world literary space portrayed on the world canvas, and benefits from the participatory nature of RPPA to arrive at more useful representations.

Over time, as the networks of contextuality on the world canvas become more apparent, we envision the emergence of dynamic maps at a higher levels of detail. We expect these to reveal more contexts and the inner- as well as extra-literary structures that underpin and facilitate the construction of global texts and will allow for a more detailed representation and analysis of their components and evolution.

As we map out, literally and figuratively spoken, the poetry of the global Romantic period, we address not only its temporal challenges, but also embrace the geographic, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the various stages of a global artistic phenomenon. We hope that by virtue of the project's historical focus on the Romantic period, its comparative focus on contextuality and the building of global texts, and its collaborative and participatory nature, the map can be useful as an emerging historical canvas for the poetry of the global Romantic period.

Known issues

Regretfully, for navigational purposes, country names and borders used in the map navigation correspond to present-day denominations and historical reality. We apologize for the resulting distortion and historical inaccuracy, and hope to improve this over time with the help of projects like OpenHistoricalMap as they evolve and mature.

Further reading

• Casanova, Pascale. "Literature as a World". New Left Review 31 (Jan/Feb 2005): 71-90.
• D'haen, Theo. "Mapping World Literature". The Routledge Companion to World Literature, ed. Theo D'haen, David Damrosch, Djelal Kadir. London: Routledge, 2011. 413-422.
• Hewitt, Rachel. "Mapping and Romanticism". The Wordsworth Circle 42(2) (Spring 2011): 157-165.
• Presner, Todd and David Shepard. "Mapping the Geospatial Turn". A New Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. 199-212.
• Tanoukhi, Nirvana. "The Scale of World Literature". New Literary History 39(3) (Summer 2008): 599-617.

Get in touch

This is an open invitation to academics, research projects, digital archives and repositories, and anyone with an interest in the literature of the Romantic period in any discipline to collaborate on RPPA. The project looks forward to welcoming partners at any stage to discuss collaboration or other forms of participation. Please do not hesitate to reach out, there are many ways to contribute and all of them are valued and appreciated:

Romantic Period Poetry Archive (RPPA)
Alexander Huber, Editor

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