The Reading Machine

A Distant Reading of Dániel Berzsenyi’s Poems

Abstract

This experimental study is an attempt to explore and test whether, by using current computational linguistics tools for the Hungarian language, it is possible to confirm hypotheses concerning the classification of Dániel Berzsenyi’s (1776-1836) poems drawing on their close reading. The paper also investigates if we can answer questions related to the phoneme theory and practice in Berzsenyi’s poems, which obviously cannot be examined by traditional close reading methods.