Estimating the Loss of Medieval Literature with an Unseen Species Model from Ecodiversity

TY - CHAP

T1 - Estimating the Loss of Medieval Literature with an Unseen Species Model from Ecodiversity

AU - Kestemont, Mike

AU - Karsdorp, F.B.

PY - 2020/10

Y1 - 2020/10

N2 - The century-long loss of documents is one of the major impediments to the study of historic literature. Here we focus on Middle Dutch chivalric epics (ca. 1200-1450), a genre for which little archival records exist that shed light on the survival rates of works and documents. We cast the quantitative estimation of these survival rates as a variant of the unseen species problem from ecodiversity. We apply an established non-parametric method ( Chao1 ) and compare it to a number of common alternatives on simulated data. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for conventional philology: our numbers suggest that the losses sustained on the level of works may be more dramatic than previously imagined, whereas those at the document-level align surprisingly well with existing estimates in book history, although these were based on completely different data sources.

AB - The century-long loss of documents is one of the major impediments to the study of historic literature. Here we focus on Middle Dutch chivalric epics (ca. 1200-1450), a genre for which little archival records exist that shed light on the survival rates of works and documents. We cast the quantitative estimation of these survival rates as a variant of the unseen species problem from ecodiversity. We apply an established non-parametric method ( Chao1 ) and compare it to a number of common alternatives on simulated data. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for conventional philology: our numbers suggest that the losses sustained on the level of works may be more dramatic than previously imagined, whereas those at the document-level align surprisingly well with existing estimates in book history, although these were based on completely different data sources.

KW - medieval literature

KW - book history

KW - unknown species problem

KW - Middle Dutch

KW - ecodiversity

M3 - Contribution to conference proceedings

VL - 2723

SP - 44

EP - 55

BT - Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Humanities Research (CHR 2020)

A2 - Karsdorp, Folgert

A2 - McGillivray, Barbara

A2 - Nerghes, Adina

A2 - Wevers, Melvin

ER -