Distancing the writing process: A stylometric approach to the session versions of Gie Bogaert's novel Roosevelt

In this presentation, we present the results of our exploratory stylometric study of the different versions of the novel Roosevelt by the Flemish author Gie Bogaert. The Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Burrows’ Delta Distance, as implemented in the Stylo Package for R (Eder et al. 2016), are the methods central to our study of the development of Roosevelt during the writing process. We compare the results of the stylometric analysis with those of a previous text genetic study to explore whether the computational approach can provide knowledge about Bogaert’s creative writing process. In particular, we investigate whether stylometric analysis can provide insights into writing phases and the development of character voices.