Prize-winning Networks: Investigating Network Connections behind Booker Prize Winning Texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15170/Focus.15.2025.4Keywords:
literary networks, Booker Prize, contemporary Anglophone literature, stylometry, cultural phenomenaAbstract
The aim of my article is to prove that there are existing network-like patterns behind Booker Prize winning (along with long- and shortlisted) texts and that these patterns can be explored, examined and described with the help of network theory. My research focuses on literary works from the late 20th and early 21st centuries that have achieved considerable success among critiques and readers and have become ‘phenomena’. Using the technical vocabulary of network and graph theory, it can be stated that these texts represent the nodes in the network mentioned above. My hypothesis is that the edges connecting these nodes are complex and dynamically changing concepts that are influenced and shaped by intra- and extratextual factors. Among these, I would like to pay particular attention to the effect of literary prizes, more precisely the Booker Prize, as an example of extra-textual factors. However tempting it may be to apply Franco Moretti’s distant reading theory, by working with a corpus as large as possible, I have started to work with a more accessible corpus: specifically texts that won the Booker Prize between 2000 and 2020. By doing so it will be possible to combine the results of data analysis and stylometric exploration while still being able to take a closer and more detailed look at the texts themselves.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Petra Balássy
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