Lab Session: Digital Humanities - Exploring with various tool

 Hello everyone,

This blog is part of a lab session on Digital Humanities, in which we are required to complete various activities. The blog has been assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir as a part of our academic learning and practical engagement with the subject.

Here are a few links that will help you gain more insight into the topic and broaden your understanding.
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Human or Computer ? Poem test

In the initial stage, we engaged with the long-standing question: Can machines compose poetry? As part of this exercise, we were presented with a poem and asked to determine whether it had been authored by a human or generated by a computer. The activity prompted serious reflection on the nature of creativity, the function of language, and the distinctions between human and artificial expression. While it was remarkable to observe how closely machine-generated text can approximate human creativity, it also became evident that certain emotional depths and subtle nuances remain characteristic of human composition.

CLiC Practical: Exploring A Christmas Carol through Concordance Searches

As part of our Digital Humanities lab under Dr. Dilip Barad, I used the CLiC concordance tool to investigate how Charles Dickens constructs the opening and shapes important themes in A Christmas Carol. My aim was to move beyond close reading on the page and to use digital methods to observe patterns of wording, repetition, and distribution across the text. Practically, I selected A Christmas Carol from the ArTs corpus on the CLiC site and ran concordance searches for three search-terms: “once upon a time”, “knocker”, and “fire”. I saved screenshots of the concordance windows for each search to document my process and findings.

Methodology

I accessed the CLiC concordance (clic.bham.ac.uk) and used the book-autocomplete to select A Christmas Carol within the ArTs  Additional Requested Texts corpus. For the phrase once upon a time I used the “Whole phrase” option; for knocker and fire I performed standard keyword concordances. For each search I examined the concordance lines, the “In bk.” distribution column and slider, and the total frequency count shown by CLiC. These digital traces provided a quick, objective view of where each lexical item appears and how it functions across the narrative.

Once upon a time Practical observation and reflection

When I searched once upon a time, I noticed that Dickens does not use it to open the novella in the fairy-tale sense; instead the phrase appears only after the narrator has already established key facts (for example, that “Marley was dead” and that Scrooge is miserly). The concordance lines and the slider showed the phrase occurring early but not at position zero. Experientially, this felt significant: Dickens frames the story by first presenting facts and character traits and then uses the familiar formula once upon a time to open the narrated episode, thereby blending authoritative narration with a conventional storytelling cue. Seeing the search results in CLiC made me appreciate how Dickens stages reader expectations he prepares us with evidence and then invites us into a story-mode with a well-known phrase.

Knocker — Practical observation and reflection

The concordance for knocker revealed seven overall occurrences concentrated at two moments: a dense cluster in Chapter 1 (where Scrooge perceives Marley's face in the door-knocker) and a final appearance in the closing chapter. While running the search I observed the repeated lines in a single passage CLiC displayed multiple adjacent concordance hits which made the textual repetition visually striking. Working with those hits in CLiC strengthened my interpretation that Dickens uses the knocker as a device to introduce the supernatural and then to circle back as a symbol of Scrooge’s transformation. The tool made the novel’s structural symmetry concrete and easy to demonstrate with evidence.

Fire - Practical observation and reflection

The concordance for fire showed an even distribution across the text. Examining the concordance lines and the “In bk.” distribution confirmed that references to fire occur in many contexts small, feeble fires associated with the clerk’s poverty; larger, social hearths in family homes; and symbolic uses tied to warmth and human fellowship. Practically, the digital search helped me group instances by context (social/solitary, large/small) and quickly locate representative lines. This made the symbolic contrast between Scrooge’s tiny coal and the communal fires of others more evident and easier to support with textual examples.

Concluding reflection

Working hands-on with CLiC transformed my reading: the concordances acted like a microscope and a map at once revealing both local repetition (the knocker cluster) and global distribution (fire appearing throughout the text). The practical exercise showed me how digital tools can corroborate and extend traditional close reading: they provide clear, retrievable evidence for claims about structure and symbolism. I will include the three screenshots above in my blog to illustrate each point, and I plan to follow up by comparing these patterns with other corpora (such as ChiLit) to further situate Dickens’s choices within nineteenth-century usage.

Voyant Tools Activity: Exploring Hard Times by Charles Dickens

For this activity, I used Voyant Tools, an online text analysis platform, to explore Hard Times by Charles Dickens. The aim was to experiment with digital tools that can reveal patterns, themes, and repetitions in a text that are not always immediately visible through traditional close reading.

Methodology

I uploaded the full text of Hard Times into Voyant. The tool automatically generated multiple visualizations, including a word cloud, frequency list, trends graph, and contextual keyword windows. These features provided both an overview and detailed insights into Dickens’s language.

Word count 

The word count from Voyant Tools shows the most frequently occurring words in Hard Times. Words like “said”, “Mr”, “Bounderby”, and “Gradgrind” dominate the text, highlighting the central characters and the importance of dialogue in driving the narrative. This visualization helps to quickly identify key figures and recurring themes in the novel.

Bubbles

Stream graph

The Stream Graph in Voyant Tools shows how the frequency of words changes across the text of Hard Times. It visually represents the flow of themes and character mentions throughout the novel. For example, words like “Gradgrind” and “Bounderby” appear prominently in certain sections, highlighting their central role at specific points in the narrative. This tool helps track the development of ideas and recurring topics, making it easier to see how Dickens structures the story and emphasizes particular themes over time.

Scatter plot

The Scatter Plot in Voyant Tools shows the relationship between two selected words or concepts throughout Hard Times. For instance, plotting “Gradgrind” against “school” highlights how frequently these two key elements appear together in the text. The distribution of points reveals patterns in character interactions, recurring themes, and narrative focus. This visualization helps to explore connections between characters, ideas, or motifs in a more analytical way, giving insight into Dickens’ thematic emphasis and storytelling structure.

Dream Scape

The Dreamscape “World Map” visualization in Voyant Tools traces the journeys of characters throughout Hard Times. It highlights where key characters like Gradgrind and Bounderby appear in the narrative, showing their movement and interactions within different settings. This visual tool makes it easy to follow character arcs and understand how Dickens structures the story across locations. It provides a unique, spatial perspective on the narrative, helping to see how characters’ actions and relationships develop throughout the novel.

Learning outcome 

Engaging with digital humanities tools such as CLiC and Voyant significantly enhanced my analytical and interpretive skills. By exploring patterns, thematic distributions, lexical repetitions, and structural features in Dickens’s texts, I gained a deeper understanding of narrative techniques, character development, symbolism, and the nuanced interplay between language, meaning, and reader perception. The hands-on experience demonstrated how digital methods can complement traditional close reading and provide clear, retrievable evidence to support literary analysis.

References 

Barad, Dilip. “What If Machines Write Poems.” What If Machines Write Poems, 1 Jan. 1970, blog.dilipbarad.com/2017/03/what-if-machines-write-poems.html. Accessed 30 Sept. 2025.