Network Science and Literary History

This paper introduces a method for applying network analysis to the sociological study of literary history. Focusing on “little magazines” and poetry journals in the U.S., Japan, and China, the authors utilize bibliographic records to construct weighted, bipartite graphs of poets and journals linked by publication. Through visual and quantitative analysis of the resulting networks, the authors aim to augment traditional hermeneutics with empirical measures that isolate aspects of the social structures from which literary modernism emerged.