With an emphasis on exploring measurable aspects of ancient narratives, Maths Meets Myths sets out to investigate age-old material with new techniques. This book collects, for the first time, novel quantitative approaches to studying sources from the past, such as chronicles, epics, folktales, and myths. It contributes significantly to recent efforts in bringing together natural scientists and humanities scholars in investigations aimed at achieving greater understanding of our cultural inheritance.

Accordingly, each contribution reports on a modern quantitative approach applicable to narrative sources from the past, or describes those which would be amenable to such treatment and why they are important.

This volume is a unique state-of-the-art compendium on an emerging research field which also addresses anyone with interests in quantitative approaches to humanities.

Inhalt

Preface.- Foreword.- Introduction.- Cognitive and Network Constraints in Real Life and Literature.- A Networks Approach to Mythological Epics.- Medieval Historical, Hagiographical and Biographical Networks.- Peopling of the New World from data on distributions of folklore motifs.- Phylogenetics Meets Folklore: Bioinformatic Approaches to the Study of International Folktales.- Analyses of a VirtualWorld.- Ghostscope: Conceptual Mapping of Supernatural Phenomena in a Large Folklore Corpus.- Complex Networks of Words in Fables.- Analysing and Restoring the Chronology of the Irish Annals.- Mapping Literate Networks in Early Medieval Ireland Quantitative Realities, Social Mythologies?.- How quantitative methods can shed light on a problem of comparative mythology: The myth of the struggle for supremacy between two groups of deities reconsidered.