If we accept that tragedy (as a literary genre) is distinct from the tragic (an existential category), then what are the characteristics of the tragic form? How should it be defined (in morphological terms) and what can computational analyses tell us about it? Are the tragic forms that developed in (semi)peripheral European cultures different from those consecrated in “core” cultures? Should we define tragedy according to its “typicality” or according to certain “extreme cases”? And finally, what were the political and ideological forces that shaped the evolution of European tragedy (especially in the modern era)? To answer these questions, the METRA project brought together a team of 24 researchers—the PI, 10 experienced researchers, 8 postdoctoral researchers, and 5 doctoral students—specialized in world literature, various national literatures, and digital humanities, who will analyze the transformations of the prototype of Greek and Latin classical tragedy in 10 modern European literatures (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian), from a geographical, morphological, and computational point of view. Based on a continuous interaction between distant reading, the sociology of literary forms, and computational criticism, the METRA methodology was designed not only in order to “measure” one of the defining genres of European literatures, but also to highlight some of the tensions and contradictions that have governed the sociopolitical dynamics of European civilization over the past five centuries.

 

Project title: Measuring Tragedy: Geographical Diffusion, Comparative Morphology, and Computational Analysis of European Tragic Form

Project code: PNRR-III-C9-2023–I8-CF163/31.07.2023

Contract no. 760249/28.12.2023

Funder: Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Digitalization, via the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience (Component 9, Initiative 8)

Duration: January 1, 2024 – June 30, 2026

Budget: €1,206,604.19

Principal Investigator: Professor Franco Moretti