Classification of Tragedies and Comedies in Calderón de la Barca’s Comedias Nuevas

Abstract

In this study, we aim at distinguishing comedies and tragedies among 112 dramas written by Calderón de la Barca, using procedures established by distributional semantics. 15 each of these comedias nuevas have already been classified by qualitative researchers as either tragedies or comedies, respectively; for another 82 dramas the classification was unknown. Four independent document embedding methods are explored, which differ from each other in matrix creation and reduction, and in the calculation of similarity or distance matrices. The best results – measured against the pre-established classification of these dramas – are obtained through the classification procedure that applied the strongest matrix reduction. In addition, a contrastive vocabulary analysis with word embeddings is carried out, based either on word lists produced by the four tested methods, or on the log-likelihood probability distribution for two sub-corpora containing only dramas already determined to be comedies or tragedies. This step permits the identification of 130 terms that are each discriminative either of comedies or of tragedies. The outcome shows that the explored methods identify tragedies with greater accuracy than comedies, indicating that tragedies show stronger lexical cohesion. It also becomes apparent that one could more appropriately consider classifications such as ›tragedy‹ and ›comedy‹ as poles between which gradual differences can be observed, whereby the ensuing transitional area contains comedias nuevas that have been described in prior research as tragicomedias or comedias mitológicas.

Keywords

• drama
• klassifikation
• cluster-analyse
• siglo de oro
• calderón de la barca, pedro *1600-1681*
• hispanistik