Drawing on techniques from the digital humanities, To See the Tree and the Forest aims to apply computational methods of text analysis to the complete works of António Ramos Rosa. In order to tackle current and future societal challenges, our team investigates how entities such as plants, animals, and minerals are part of a poetic construct that conceives the world from an ecological perspective and, as such, contributes to imagining a more inclusive planetary coexistence between humans and more-than-humans. This systematic processing of Ramos Rosa’s oeuvre and consequent re-reading will offer us a bird’s-eye view of his poetry with this ecocritical formulation in mind. Our key assumption is that every book published by António Ramos Rosa concentrates on the natural world to some degree. Thus, taking the question of nature into account is crucial for a full assessment of his work.
Components
To See the Tree and the Forest combines four different components in a modular and heuristical framework:
- computational text analysis to identify patterns and read the corpus quantitatively
- information visualization as a visual method for re-reading the corpus
- detailed ecocritical examination for a re-reading of the corpus
- digital literary works produced by invited artists which will serve as creative re-readings of the corpus
We argue that each one of these components represents a unique interpretative act. No less important is the fact that these different interpretations are articulated in the project so that they inform and reinforce one another, thus opening doorways for re-reading Ramos Rosa’s poetry in crossover domains. When heuristically considered, the cross-pollinated research methods and techniques contribute to the diversification of the reflexive potential of the project. In this way, the dialogue between the different approaches will fulfill the project’s aim to think critically about its own methods of knowledge production and dissemination.
Research questions
- What kind of interdisciplinary inquiries and interfaced speculations are at our disposal in the age of digital software and media?
- How do we express the relationship between knowledge representation and information modeling?
- Is it possible to rethink the entanglements between nature and the digital from the perspective of ecocriticism?
- What does it mean to think algorithmically in the humanities and literary studies?
Research goals
- Generate new insights for the study of poetry from a computational-based perspective, namely through experimental methods of information visualization and creative practice-based research;
- Develop, test, and implement new models of collaborative knowledge production and ‘critical making’ across disciplines and aiming at different academic and non-academic audiences;
- Shed light on ARR’s poetry through an ecocritical lens and understand how it contributes to a more inclusive planetary co-existence between humans and more-than-humans;
- Strengthen the field of CLS and DH in the Portuguese academic space while also contributing to global diversity and pluralism in these communities.
Timeframe
1 March 2023 – 28 February 2025 (24 months)
Sustainable Development Goals
Funding
The exploratory project To See the Tree and the Forest. Reading the Poetry of António Ramos Rosa from a Distance is funded by the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., in the context of the research developed with the reference 2022.08122.PTDC and DOI 10.54499/2022.08122.PTDC