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Contextual factors in literary quality judgments: A quantitative analysis of an online writing community

Some literary works and authors acquire enduring reputation, whereas others do not. What causes the difference is a contested issue. Fishelov (2010) distinguishes between a ‘beauty party’ and a ‘power party’, where the beauty party argues for the existence of aesthetic qualities, inherent in the work, while the power party argues that social power structures determine the outcome of canonisation processes. As argued by Miall (2006), the question should be decided empirically. However, because there is no objective measure of literary quality (if there were one, the discussion would be over) empirical investigation of the issue has been fraught with difficulty. Both parties can lay some claim to empirical evidence. For the power party, Rosengren (1987: 295-325) and Van Rees and Vermunt (1996: 317-333), among others, have shown that reputations to some extent are made by newspaper reviewers. For the other side, some of the evidence that Miall adduces suggests that foregrounded linguistic features (deviant from normal, non-literary usage) may be responsible for some of the (emotional) response that literary reading evokes. It is long way, however, from that finding to showing that this sort of textual properties can actually explain a work’s longer-term reputation.