I was watching an episode of Numb3rs earlier, and it made me think of the stories we just read in class. We're working on analyzing stories using the historical/biographical critical theory, which is to say, using a combination of world events and the author's history to further understand the story.
With the first of our stories, "A Jury of Her Peers," this was fairly easy. We had an extensive biography on the author, Susan Glaspell, and were able to tie her life to her story.
Mary Lerner, the author of the second story, was a completely different situation. We didn't have any information on her. None at all. We could do a historical analysis of the text, but not a biographical. It made me wonder, as I was watching this particular episode of Numb3rs, if we could reverse the process...work backwards and instead of analyzing the stories from the author's life, determine the author's life from the stories.
I'm not a math person, I couldn't do it. Numbers and I, well, let's just say that we're not always the best of friends. Still, it made me think...what if it was possible to reverse the analysis? What if, somewhere, someone could write an equation that took all the information in the stories, extracted the common threads, and spat out a generalized biography? I don't know if it's possible, but it's something that made me stop and think.
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