Social network analysis, habitus and the field of literary activity

What is it about?

This is an introduction to social network analysis (SNA) as applied to the correspondence of literary figures such as poets, dramatists and novelists. The article demonstrates that literary correspondence provides useful data for literary historians as it indicates visually how different types of capital - economic, symbolic, cultural etc - contribute to the habitus, or lived environment, of the writer. It takes the published correspondence of two Scottish poets - Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Morgan - to show differences in the habitus of each that can be ascribed to their sexual orientation, social class and professional status, and the changing role that women played in the earlier and later 20th century.

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Why is it important?

The article is important as it suggests a relatively novel way to approach literary history using correspondence as data for social network analysis. The visualisations such analyses produce prompt questions about the nature of interpersonal relations that closer reading of the correspondence may answer. We believe that such techniques can be applied to literary correspondence on a much larger scale.

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