Why are we doing this?
The worlds of Lewis Carroll are often seen as being purely nonsensical and upside down--everytime that one of them is represented in popular culture (movies, songs, and the like), the general theme is complete, unordered madness. That's why you sometimes see the "troubled, angsty" youth of today quoting Carroll in an effort to represent their inner turmoil. However, the Alice Project crew wonder exactly how unordered this universe was--are the characters truly as random as they might as first appear? Or is there some--pardon the expression--method to the madness? We set on a trip through the looking glass to find out.
...what exactly are we doing?
- By looking at factors such as sentence types used and presence (or lack) of various literary devices, can patterns be found that distinguish the characters?
- Can these same factors be used to define certain groups of characters, rather than just individuals? These groups include species, world placement, gender, and chess color alignment.
- And of course...why? Why might these trends (if any) be, and why might we care?
About Us
Peter is a junior studying poetry and computer science at the University of Pittsburgh, and got sucked into the project during team selection! He's magnificent with putting together websites. Contact him at pbw8@pitt.edu
Rachel Peters is a sophomore studying French and Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh who has always had interests in language and sifting through the fun that is Lewis Carroll's writings, and the two combined have created a desire to further discover how one can uncover distinguishing traits among written voices using computational analysis. Contact Rachel at rpp22@pitt.edu