Botond Szemes
(University of Tartu, Estonia)

12. November 2025 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89465781146?pwd=gs9bPPZaUKaIrfba83FjEHyxtEVO7a.1
Meeting ID: 894 6578 1146
Passcode: 789194

Botond Szemes will introduce his book Digitális irodalomtudomány from 2024 , the first Hungarian-language monograph in the field of Computational Literary Studies. The volume includes case studies on Hungarian literary history, some of which will also be discussed in this lecture. Based on the analysis of 150 novels, the studies trace stylistic developments from the early 19th century to the late 20th century, in parallel with changes in the history of ideas. By examining the frequency of various linguistic elements, the research draws conclusions about literary style and worldview, as well as about each work’s position within literary history. The book focuses primarily on sentence types characteristic of particular authors and periods. Among others, it explores József Eötvös’s complex sentences, Tibor Déry’s similes, Péter Nádas’s adversative constructions, László Krasznahorkai’s famously long sentences, Imre Kertész’s explanatory structures, and the distinctive features of Miklós Mészöly’s prose.

The event will take place as part of the bilateral mobility project SAV–MAV 2025–2026.

Dr. Botond Szemes is a research fellow at The Center for Digital Text Scholarship (DigiTS) at the University of Tartu. He conducts various research in the field of computational literary studies, including stylometry, computational drama analysis, and theoretical studies on the role of statistical operations and data visualization in knowledge production. He also deals with the history of Hungarian literature after the Second World War; and the possibilities of comparative studies of Central Europe.