The Epic Poems of Milton, Wordsworth, Keats: A Digital Quantitative Stylistic Analysis

This investigation explores the stylistic connections between John Milton, an influential 17th-century poet, and prominent 19th-century Romantic figures, William Wordsworth and John Keats, through the prism of stylometry, a quantitative stylistic analysis technique. Employing the digital analytical tool Stylo-R, this study conducts a comprehensive stylometric analysis across an extensive corpus that includes Milton's works alongside those of Romantic and Victorian poets. The diverse stylometric methods it employs are cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and various supervised learning approaches. These methods quantitatively assess the stylistic proximities and divergences among Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, and other poets of the 19th century. Although Keats was profoundly inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost, he was critical of Milton's linguistic style, aspiring to erase the precursor's influence from his own poetic language. This task he eventually deemed impossible, thereby abandoning his epic project. This research begins with the question of whether it will be possible to quantitatively confirm stylistic similarities between Paradise Lost and the Hyperion poems. Interestingly, the analysis reveals that Wordsworth, not Keats, shares the most stylistic similarities with Milton. Various stylometric analysis methods consistently support the stylistic similarity between Milton and Wordsworth. The fact that Wordsworth is identified as the poet whose style most closely aligns with Milton's highlights the complex ways in which his literary legacy was reinterpreted and woven into the fabric of Romantic poetic expression. Stylometry provides a unique methodological lens, uncovering the distinct stylistic fingerprints of each poet and contextualizing these insights within the larger narrative of literary evolution from Milton's magnum opus, Paradise Lost, through to the Romantic poets' pursuit of epic poetry. Not only does this analytical approach enrich our understanding of the enduring influence of literary tradition and the creative processes of individual authors. But it also underscores the pivotal role of digital humanities in unlocking new dimensions of literary analysis―in other words, in offering fresh perspectives on the dialogues between past literary greatness and subsequent poetic endeavors.