Artificial adaptive systems for philological analysis: the Pessoa case

Simone Celani

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2014, Supplemento 6, 203-215

Abstract

Fernando Pessoa represents an extreme case in the context of contemporary author’s philology. The breadth of his legacy, the large number of unpublished works at his death, the disorganisation and incompleteness of his materials and the entropy caused by the early processes of inventory produced an archive, now largely in the possession of the Portuguese National Library, partially refractory to the application of traditional text-criticism methods. This paper will demonstrate, through some application examples, that a careful study of material aspects concerning the originals of the Pessoa archive, made through the use of Artificial Adaptive Systems, will shed new light on the complex and multi-layered writing system created by Pessoa and identify new genetic relationships among his works, useful for the construction of an overall mapping of his literary output.

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