Modernizing Empires: Enlightenment, Nationalist Vanguards and Non-Western Literary Modernities

Projektinformationen

NONWESTLIT

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 950513

DOI

10.3030/950513

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 9 September 2020

Startdatum 1 September 2021

Enddatum 31 August 2027

Finanziert unter

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 1 457 660,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 1 457 660,00

Koordiniert durch

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NONWESTLIT (Modernizing Empires: Enlightenment, Nationalist Vanguards and Non-Western Literary Modernities)

Berichtszeitraum: 2023-03-01 bis 2024-08-31

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

NONWESTLIT is a comparative study of cultural reform, linguistic renewal, and literary renaissance movements in three imperial traditions caught between the East-West divide: Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan. It examines the cultural models negotiated in the processes of modernization and westernization, arguing that their shared historical experience resulted in a common intellectual vocabulary and narrative models shared by otherwise extremely diverse cultures. Despite these unmistakable parallels, literary studies have failed to address this shared history. This project aims to fill this gap by developing a comparative model that draws a polycentric and plural map of literary modernity. In three subprojects, the project examines structural similarities in:

1. Questions and concepts of literary criticism;
2. Translation practices and translated works from Europe;
3. Narrative logics and typologies in fiction.

It is the first multilingual comparative study of non-Western literary modernities to bring together these specific traditions. It challenges Eurocentric models of literary history that interpret these cases as failures or late emulations. It challenges the overemphasis on single national traditions or on postcolonial approaches, and the limited body of texts and analytical techniques studied in the study of the non-West. The project pursues a multi-method research strategy to conduct historical and literary comparisons between emerging national literary systems, combining qualitative and quantitative methods to map transnational networks of narrative strategies, conceptual systems, and translation practices. It brings new directions to computational literary studies, extending it to non-Western and multilingual comparative research. Finally, it makes a much-needed contribution to the current literary corpus by making unknown and untranslated texts available and accessible.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

The NONWESTLIT project has made substantial progress from its inception, focusing primarily on the development of two critical databases: the NONWESTLIT Literary Periodicals Database (DB1) and the NONWESTLIT Translations Database (DB2). These databases target the literary and cultural discourse of non-Western imperial traditions, the Ottoman, Russian, and Japanese empires. The main work packages involved include Data Acquisition, Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis, Correlations and Theory, and Translation and Open Access Digitization.

DB1, established during the first half of the project, has been instrumental in creating a comprehensive, multi-level, multi-label text classification dataset from 19th-century periodicals across the three studied cultures. This includes collecting, categorizing, and annotating a vast array of documents, leading to a unique multilingual text classification dataset, which is unprecedented in literary studies. DB2 focuses on the translations of European literary works into Ottoman, Russian, and Japanese, offering insights into the cross-cultural literary exchanges of the period. It correlates original works with their translations, providing a deeper understanding of the publication dynamics and literary influences across these cultures.

Significant technological advancements have been made, particularly in the use of large language models for analyzing this rich dataset, establishing NONWESTLIT as a pioneering effort in applying AI to the study of historical and low-resource languages.

Throughout this period, the project has successfully conducted numerous workshops, published peer-reviewed articles, and engaged in a wide range of dissemination activities, all of which surpass the initial milestones and deliverables outlined in the project's action plan. This robust engagement has not only advanced the project's objectives but has also fostered significant interdisciplinary collaboration and intellectual exchange among its members.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

The NONWESTLIT project has significantly advanced beyond the state of the art by integrating methodologies from comparative literature, cultural history, and computer science. The creation and analytical processing of the two databases have enabled innovative research methods that combine qualitative and quantitative analysis with cutting-edge computational techniques.

One of the groundbreaking achievements of the project is the application of large language models to a unique dataset of historical texts, which has not only enriched literary studies but has also contributed to advancements in natural language processing and machine learning for historical and low-resource languages. This application of AI tools represents a significant methodological innovation, facilitating the automation of categorization and enhancing the interpretive capabilities across different languages and cultural contexts.

Looking forward to the end of the project, NONWESTLIT is expected to produce further novel methodologies and interdisciplinary developments. It anticipates more publication and dissemination activities, which includes the open-access publication of three anthologies of literary criticism in translation from nineteenth century Russian, Ottoman and Japanese sources; the big-data corpus that will offer access to the database and datasets created throughout the project; the digitized collection of periodicals from the period in original and transliterated form; several peer-reviewed articles and a monograph on comparative literary modernities.

The NONWESTLIT project not only promises to push the boundaries of literary and cultural studies but also aims to transform the technological landscape by integrating AI with the humanities, thus offering significant contributions to both fields by the end of the project.