'Parlez-vous по-русски?' A Digital Analysis of the Role of French and Russian in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'

• In Event: Tolstoy and Technology

Abstract

This paper seeks to offer a new, digital approach to War and Peace that explores the particularities of Tolstoy’s use of French in relation to his use of Russian. In order to understand Tolstoy’s intention with both languages, we conducted a topic modeling analysis using the coding language R to reveal what topics and themes are most prevalent in each language and, subsequently, discover if they change over time.

Authors

• Margaret Godwin-Jones, U of Kansas

• Devin Culley McFadden, U of Kansas