’Five stars – it was amazing’ : towards an automated comparative analysis of layman and professional literary reviewing

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1993) argued that the literary status of a text as symbolic capital depends on the recognition by authorised institutions or individuals. Research on the field of literary criticism has often focused on this institutionalised consecration of literary texts, concerning traditional gatekeepers, such as professional critics, academies and prizes (English 2009, Sapiro 2016). Furthermore, it has described the threat posed to professional critics’ position of authority by layman literary criticism and the online book culture (Löffler 2017, Schneider 2018; Kempke/Vöcklinghaus/Zeh 2019, Chong 2020). Nevertheless, comparatively little research (e.g. Kellermann/Mehling/Rehfeldt 2016; Kellermann/Mehling 2017; Bogaert 2017) has analysed the emergence of layman criticism itself or the content of user-generated online criticism shared on peer-to-peer recommendation systems, like Goodreads. In this paper, I aim to analyse the practice of reading in the form of the evaluative “talk of literature” by amateur critics. In order to analyse this type of criticism, I will examine the reader-reviews about the books that were nominated and/or shortlisted in a specific year for three prominent literary prizes from different language communities that draw on audience participation, namely the Gouden (Boeken)Uil/Fintro Literatuurprijs, the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis and the Not the Booker Prize. Each prize supports a different level of transparency and audience participation and the focus will be on those reviews written in Dutch (Fintro Literatuurprijs), German (Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis) or English (Not the Booker Prize), respectively. I intend to map the various evaluative criteria used by lay critics and provide an answer to following research questions: On which aspects, e.g. plot, language use… does a reader-reviewer concentrate when evaluating a text and how are these aspects subsequently evaluated? According to Bourdieu (1984) there are class-structured differences in cultural taste and consumption; does a similar difference exist in the context of criteria used by professional and layman criticism? Is Wegmann’s thesis that “Auseinandersetzungen mit ästhetischen Formprinzipien, mit der Poetik von literarischen Texten, ihrer Stilistik, ihren rhetorischen Mitteln” in the Web 2.0 “[t]endenziell eher unterrepräsentiert sind” (287) correct? We posit that this is not necessarily the case and that a prize’s set-up, as well as the level of audience participation and transparency may influence the reader-reviewer’s criteria and evaluation. Bibliografie: Bogaert, Xiana. ‘ICH WÜRDE AM LIEBSTEN MIT DER JURY DISKUTIEREN! #TDDL‘. Der Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis: ein Vergleich zwischen der Jury- und Laienkritik auf Twitter. 2017. University of Ghent, unpublished thesis. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press, 1984. Bourdieu, Pierre. The field of cultural production: essays on art and literature. Polity Press/Blackwell Publishers, 1993. Chong, Phillipa K. Inside the Critics’ Circle. Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times. Princeton University Press, 2020. English, James F. The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. Harvard University Press, 2009. Kellermann, Holger, and Gabriele Mehling. „Laienrezensionen auf amazon.de im Spannungsfeld zwischen Alltagskommunikation und professioneller Literaturkritik”. Die Rezension. Aktuelle Tendenzen der Literaturkritik, edited by Andrea Bartl and Markus Behmer, Königshausen & Neuman, 2017, pp. 173-202. Kellermann, Holger, Gabriele Mehling and Martin Rehfeldt. „Wie bewerten Laienrezensenten? Ausgewählte Ergebnisse einer inhaltsanalytischen Studie”. Was wir lesen sollen: Kanon und literarische Wertung am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts, edited by Stefan Neuhaus and Uta Schaffers, Königshausen & Neumann, 2016, pp. 229-238. Kempke, Kevin, Lena Vöcklinghaus and Miriam Zeh. Institutsprosa: Literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf akademischen Schreibschulen. Spector Books, 2019. Löffler, Sigrid. „Danke, kein Bedarf? Wie die totgesagte Literaturkritik ihr Ableben überleben kann.“ Stimmen der Zeit. - Freiburg, Br. : Herder, vol. 235, no. 12, 2017, pp. 805–814. Sapiro, Gisèle. “The Metamorphosis of Modes of Consecration in the Literary Field: Academies, Literary Prizes, Festivals.” Poetics, vol. 59, Dec. 2016, pp. 5–19. Schneider, Ute. „Bücher zeigen und Leseatmosphären inszenieren – vom Habitus enthusiastischer Leserinnen und Leser. “ Gelesene Literatur: Populäre Lektüre im Zeichen des Medienwandels, edited by Steffen Martus and Carlos Spoerhase, edition text + kritik, 2018, pp. 113-123. Wegmann, Thomas: “Warentest und Selbstmanagement. Literaturkritik im Web 2.0 als Teil nachbürgerlicher Wissens- und Beurteilungskulturen.” Kanon, Wertung und Vermittlung: Literatur in der Wissensgesellschaft, edited by Matthias Beilein et al., De Gruyter 2012, pp. 279-292.

Publication year:2021