Quantification of literature

William Shakespeare

The analyses conducted about the literary field in the book The Quantification of History and the Future of the Western World cover almost three thousand years of Greco-Roman and Western literary history. This is a biographical analysis, based on recording the birth, flourishing, and death dates (if known), as well as the nationality of the writers. Each of the 210 historical figures considered has been assigned a quantitative rating, represented by a number between zero and ten. This number was calculated based on the number of lines dedicated to each author in the texts or encyclopedias used as the basis for the study.

The 11 best Western literary authors

Score	Name	Dates
10	Shakespeare, William	1564-1616
8	Dante Alighieri	1265-1321
	Cervantes, Miguel de	1547-1616
	Goethe, Wolfgang	1749-1832
7	Vega, Félix Lope de	1562-1635
	Voltaire (F.M. Arouet)	1694-1778
	Dickens, Charles	1812-1870
6	Petrarca, Francesco	1304-1374
	Calderón de la Barca	1600-1681
	Milton, John	1608-1674
	Tolstoi, León	1828-1910

 

The results appear reasonable. In usual surveys and analyses, where people in general or experts express their opinions on which writers of our civilization should be considered the best in history, Shakespeare, Dante, and Cervantes are always named, while Goethe is often mentioned as well. It seems, then, that these four authors are indisputable. Moreover, when a single name is requested, the one most often chosen is precisely Shakespeare, which aligns with the fact that his name appears first in this study.

The four authors ranked first belong to four different countries: Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and Germany. In contrast, France, which ranks second in points, has not placed any author among the top four. However, it is the country with the most representatives.

If we turn to the seven writers rated 6 and 7 points, we find two more Spaniards (Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca), two Britons (Milton and Dickens), a second Italian (Petrarch), a Frenchman (Voltaire), and a Russian (Tolstoi). While it could be argued whether Voltaire was truly the greatest French writer of all time, the presence of the other six authors in these prominent positions seems reasonable.

The attached figure shows that Western literature has not developed continuously, but rather that its great figures are grouped into three periods of splendor separated by long intervening periods. The first great period centers on the 14th century and is almost exclusively Italian. The second, whose peak corresponds to the second half of the 16th century, is based on the contributions of Spain, Britain, and Portugal, with lesser participation from France and Italy. The third, which reached its culmination in the first half of the 19th century, relies especially on France, Great Britain, and Germany, with significant contributions from the United States and Russia. The interval between each pair of consecutive peaks is coincidentally two and a half centuries, although between the last two peaks there is a fourth, smaller peak corresponding to the first half of the 18th century, in which France and Great Britain participated almost exclusively.

By comparison, in the analysis of Greco-Roman literature, represented by 38 authors, the order is also logical: Homer appears first with 10 points; Aristophanes and Virgil with 9; Aeschylus, Euripides, and Horace with 8; and Sophocles and Theocritus with 7. The attached figure shows the temporal distribution of Greco-Roman literature.

If we compare the normalized curves of the two civilizations, we can see that they are very similar. In both cases, we have a prologue, a gap of several centuries, a second, much more significant peak, another long gap with some intermediate activity, and finally a third, also very significant, peak. In the case of the West, the story ends there, for the time being. In the case of Greece and Rome, there are two subsequent peaks, smaller than the third, which mark the final literary decline of that civilization.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca