Abstract

As a computational approach to literary criticism, the method of character network analysis has attracted attention. The character network is composed of nodes as characters and links as relationship between characters, and has been used to analyze literary works systematically. However, there were limitations in that relationships between characters were so superficial that they could not reflect intimate relationships and quantitative data from the network were not interpreted in depth regarding meaning of literary works. In this study, we propose an improved method of character network analysis through a case study on the play . First, we segmented the character network into a dialogue network focused on speaker-to-listener relationship and an opinion network focused on subject-to-object relationship. We analyzed these networks in various ways and discussed how analysis results could reflect structure and meaning of the work. Through these studies, we strived to find a way of organic and meaningful connection between literary criticism in humanities and network analysis in computer science.