Ewan Jones

Tracing Shifting Conceptual Vocabularies Through Time

This paper presents work in progress on an algorithm to track and identify changes in the vocabulary used to describe particular concepts over time, with emphasis on treating concepts as distinct from changes in word meaning. We apply the algorithm to word vectors generated from Google Books n-grams from 1800–1990 and evaluate the induced networks with respect to their flexibility (robustness to changes in vocabulary) and stability (they should not leap from topic to topic). We also describe work in progress using the British National Biography Linked Open Data Serials to construct a “ground truth” evaluation dataset for algorithms which aim to detect shifts in the vocabulary used to describe concepts. Finally, we discuss limitations of the proposed method, ways in which the method could be improved in the future, and other considerations.

Coventry Patmore's Corpus

This article challenges the longstanding popular and critical consensus that Coventry Patmore is an “abstract,” “idealizing” or “immaterial” poet. On the contrary, Patmore vied with Swinburne as the most cosmopolitan of Victorian poets, being a radically conservative Hegelian and heterodox Catholic, in addition to producing some of the most technically experimental verse in the English vernacular. By reading his varied corpus, I demonstrate that Patmore thinks the body in a complex and dialectical manner, which nonetheless remains significantly distinct from what became known as “the fleshly school of poetry.” This argument rests on several related readings, all of which seek to correct the standard account of Patmore’s career. I firstly consider his aphoristic writings, which demonstrate Patmore’s parallel thinking of erotic desire and theological devotion that disconcerted several putatively more “embodied” contemporaries such as Hopkins. I then seek to restore Patmore to a broader European context, which includes Paul Claudel and G. W. F., of whose work Patmore proves one of the finest English interpreters. Finally, I read The Unknown Eros (1877), to suggest a dynamic and fluid relation with what is often erroneously taken to clinch his reputation as a prosodic idealist, “The Essay on Metrical Law.”