Re-Weaving the Word-Web: Graph Theory and Rhymes

Abstract

My title, "Re-Weaving the Word-Web," refers to the ongoing effort to reconstruct earlier states of language. The word-web in question is that of sound and semantic associations in either prose or poetry. Today we have a much better idea how Chaucer may have pronounced his words than Dryden did, for example. However, we do not have recordings of the actual speech - such as those made by Tennyson, Browning, and others in the nineteenth century - with which to guide our re-weaving of marks on the manuscript page that are the suggestions of sounds into knowledge of how to produce those sounds.