Dr. Corina Koolen presented her research from the project "The Riddle of Literary Quality". The research found that female authors tended to receive significantly lower ratings of literary quality than male authors, especially in genres like romantic novels. Two potential causes were explored: bias against female authors, and differences in textual features and writing styles between male and female authors. Experiments found no evidence of bias based solely on author gender. However, differences in topics and descriptions between male and female authored texts, and their interaction with potential rater bias, could partially explain the observed quality gaps. The presentation outlined the research methods, including analysis of a national reader survey and computational stylometric analysis of novels.
2. Corina Koolen
• Postdoc at Huygens Institute for the history of
the Netherlands (now part of KNAW
Humanities Cluster) in The Riddle of Literary
Quality
• Thesis: Reading beyond the female
• Next year: Dutch version for the larger public
@corinakoolen
3. Social media
• Blog: www.corinakoolen.nl
• Twitter: @corinakoolen
• Slideshare:
https://www.slideshare.net/CorinaKoolen/
Get this presentation here:
@corinakoolen
4. Outline
- The Riddle of Literary Quality project
- The National Reader Survey (NLO)
- NLO: F vs. M
- Exploration potential causes gap:
- Bias
- Textual differences
@corinakoolen
16. Respondent motivation De Moor
“[H]et verhaal was matig, taalkundig gezien was
het niet goed. Absoluut niet boeiend. Het stijgt
niet uit boven een bouquetreeks roman.
onbegrijpelijk dat dit boek een prijs gewonnen
heeft.”
“[T]he story was mediocre, linguistically it was
not good. Not compelling at all. It does not
rise above the Mills and Boon novel.
Incomprehensible that this book has won a
prize.”
@corinakoolen
19. Potential cause 1: bias
- Series of qualitative experiments
@corinakoolen
20. A. Author gender
- 1 text of 250 words (by author Emy Koopman)
- 3 groups
- Group 1: author is male
- Group 2: author is female
- Group 3: there’s an author
- Score on literary quality (1-7)
- ANOVA: no significant differences
@corinakoolen
21. B. Prestige – further research
- Gender characters – gender author
- Authors’ praise on blurb
@corinakoolen
28. Case: women, body, appearance
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the
leitmotif of the unruly body (…) that needs
constant disciplining is constitutive of the
chick lit novel.” -- Gill and Herdieckerhoff
(2006)
@corinakoolen
30. In sum
- Looking into literary quality, we found:
- Textual patterns
- Female authors lagging behind
- Looking at potential causes for gap, we found:
- It is not just author gender but more likely:
- Complicated interaction text – author gender – bias
(= tacit assumptions and extrapolation based on
gender)
@corinakoolen
32. Pilot study
• 36 novels
• 12 general fiction, high scores, male author
• 12 general fiction, high scores, female author
• 12 romantic fiction, low scores, female author
• 10 translated from English, 2 originally Dutch
• + Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love in exp. 1
@corinakoolen
33. Computational analysis: stylometry
• Method in Eder (2017)
• Stylo
• Bootstrap consensus tree: 100-1000 MFW
• Classic Delta distance
• Gephi
• Modularity
• Force Atlas2
@corinakoolen
