This special issue seeks to invite scholars interested in using Wikipedia and related Linked Open Data projects as a new kind of source to study literary reception.
Die Informationstechnik eröffnet den Kulturwissenschaften neue Spielräume. Die Computer-Analyse alter Handschriften kann bislang verborgene Zusammenhänge sichtbar machen.
Vossian antonomasia is a stylistic device which attributes a certain property to a person by naming another (more well-known, more popular) person as a reference point. For instance, when Jim Koch is described as “the Steve Jobs of Beer”, certain qualities of Steve Jobs, be it entrepreneurship or persuasiveness, are assigned to Jim Koch, co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company. VAs consist of three parts: a source (in our example “Steve Jobs”) serves as paragon to elevate the target (“Jim Koch”) by applying a modifier (“of Beer”) that provides the corresponding context. VA is named after Gerardus Vossius (1577– 1649), the Dutch classical scholar and author of rhetorical textbooks, who first distinguished and described VA as a separate phenomenon.