Robocoap: Text ⇢ Gephi

RobocoapAs promised in the Don Quijote de la Network post, I Just packaged the R code that generated the data used in Gephi to visualize the network graphs describing Don Quijote.

Now it should be fairly simple (or at least simpler) for anybody to generate such graphs for their favorite books. And since the package automatizes the process like if a robot was collecting the coappearances of elements within a text, its name came to be… Robocoap.

For now the package has just one function (novel.coap) intended for books with a novel format. With minor work, and down the road, the package will also handle theater plays & movie scripts formats and, with a little bit more of work, collections of research papers. Until then, enjoy your novels and have fun!

Don Quijote de la Network

quijoteNetwork theory is a quite thrilling subject and specially so in our nowadays big data society where we have at our disposal awesome free tools like Gephi.

There are many different kind of networks and fields where these analysis can take place and today’s post will be on literature and, in particular, the social network structures within the master piece of Spanish literature: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha.

As an interesting anecdote about the qualities of this novel, Sigmund Freud first came to Don Quijote as a boy and loved the novel so much that he learnt Spanish so as to read it in its original language keeping the secret from his parents who might have disapproved of the hobby. So if you want to fully enjoy the book and not to lose anything in translation go Freud on it.

So let’s follow Don Quijote through the Network and, in case it is not obvious enough, doing this sort of analysis on a book implies major spoilers ahead.

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