Measuring East European Literary Nations: Quantitative History, Geographies of Production, and Networks of Prestige

Ziel

MEELNA reconceptualizes Central and East European literary history as a measurable system of cultural production. It transforms traditional national literary historiography and literary sociology into interoperable datasets and comparative cultural indicators, bridging digital humanities, comparative literature, and cultural sociology. Focusing on Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Serbia (1867–2020), MEELNA investigates how translation, genre evolution, and spatial networks shaped the emergence of “literary nations” in a region marked by interimperial transitions, socialist regimes, and post-communist transformations. The project asks: How did translation construct cultural openness? How did genre balance reflect ideological change? What can long-term, quantitative analyses reveal about the evolution of national literary systems? The project builds the first comparative database of East European literary production, integrating novels, poetry, drama, and criticism—both original works and translations—through harmonized metadata. Quantitative modeling, network and GIS analysis, and topic modeling trace the dynamics of production, translation, and recognition across three historical phases: interimperial modernization (1867–1917), postimperial reorganizations of nationalism (1918–1947), and state-socialist transformation (1948–1989). MEELNA’s innovative concept of “measurable literature” integrates digital metadata with ideological macroanalysis, enabling a new paradigm for comparative literary studies: quantitative literary history. By correlating literary data with political and ideological variables, the project models the cycles of expansion, crisis, and renewal that define East European modernity. Ultimately, MEELNA repositions Eastern Europe within the global literary arena, demonstrating that its semi-peripheral cultures function both as receivers and catalysts in world literature.

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