通过分析150部英美小说,揭示19世纪男性气质从贵族向冒险型商业气质转变。
From Gentlemen to Frontiermen: Masculine Formations in English-Language Fiction (1771--1930)
- 用指代消解构建男性角色文本片段,结合年份与作者性别建模性别气质分布。
- 六种男性气质中,帝国/冒险型增长最快,而贵族与神圣权威型持续下降。
- 方法可复现且结果契合已有研究,适合性别与文学史交叉研究者参考。
19世纪小说中的男性气质并非单一理想,而是多种竞争性范式构成的场域。基于txtLAB Novel450语料库中1771至1930年间发表的150部英美经典小说,本研究通过指代消解技术将男性角色的姓名、名词提及和代词归入角色特定引用链,聚焦男性形象刻画。采用无监督结构主题模型,并以出版年份和作者性别作为主题流行度协变量。模型识别出六类男性气质:贵族骑士型、基督教男性气质、绅士体面型、乡村乡绅型、职业商业型及帝国/冒险型。整体趋势显示,与世袭地位和神圣权威相关的类型衰落,而以有偿工作和探险为核心的类型上升。其中,帝国/冒险型(尤其是边疆荒野风格)增幅最大。职业商业型虽有增长,但不及冒险型显著。男性作者作品中,冒险与商业型男性气质更常见。该方法无需预设词汇表,却能自动识别出与独立学术研究相符的类别,为测量长19世纪性别权威重构提供可复现路径。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Masculinity in nineteenth-century fiction is not a single ideal but a field of competing scripts. Drawing on 150 British and American canonical novels from the txtLAB Novel450 corpus, published between 1771 and 1930, this paper examines the changing relative prominence of competing models of masculine authority. To focus the analysis on masculine characterisation, the study extracts male-character-centred text windows by using coreference resolution to group names, nominal mentions, and pronouns into character-specific reference chains. It then fits an unsupervised structural topic model with publication year and author gender as topic-prevalence covariates. The model identifies six distinct masculine formations: aristocratic-chivalric, Christian manhood, gentlemanly respectability, country squire, professional-commercial, and imperial/adventure. Across the corpus, formations tied to inherited rank and sacred authority decline, while those organised around paid work and adventure rise. The largest increase occurs not in professional-commercial breadwinning but in imperial/adventure masculinity, particularly the frontier-wilderness register. The trajectory points to a reallocation from inherited and sacred status towards achieved, commercial, and expansionary forms of masculine authority. Adventurous and commercial formations are also more prevalent in novels by authors recorded as male. Because these formations emerge without a seeded vocabulary yet align with categories established in independent scholarship, the article offers a reproducible method for measuring the reorganisation of gendered authority across the long nineteenth century.
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