Quantitative analysis of the journal Índice Literario (1932-1936)

• Main Author: Juana María González
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya 2021-01-01
• Series: Artnodes
• Subjects: Silver Age; Literature; Text Mining; Topic Modelling; R
• Online Access: https://raco.cat/index.php/Artnodes/article/view/374373

In this article we will apply various statistical analyses with the R programming language (word frequency, bigrams, word co-occurrence and Topic Modelling) to the bibliographical reviews of 1932-1933 from the Spanish journal Índice Literario (1932-1936) in order to bring us closer (i) to the vision of the collaborators on Índice Literario in the general context of the literature written in Spain in the 1930s and, particularly, in the literary work written by women and (ii) to the social and political situation in Spain during these years which is reflected in the work of the authors reviewed and in the journal reviews. Índice Literario was part of the section “Archivos de Literatura Española Contemporánea” (“Contemporary Spanish Literature Archives”) in the Centre for Historical Studies (1910-1939) and was managed by the Spanish poet Pedro Salinas (1891-1951) and a group of collaborators. The journal was a clear attempt by the Centre for Historical Studies to open itself up to the literary scene of the time and provides an indispensable source of information for getting to know the cultural reality during the years of the Second Spanish Republic. The article concludes that the quantitative analysis (the discovery of patterns, such as trends in the use of words or the identification of the most important subjects in the reviews included in the journal) complements and enriches the qualitative analysis of the publication in a satisfactory way.