Computers have aided in the study of humanities for almost as long as the machines have existed. Decades ago, when the technology consisted solely of massive, number-crunching mainframe computers, the chief liberal arts applications were in compiling statistical indexes of works of literature.
Mainframe computers helped greatly in the highly laborious task, which dates back to the Renaissance, of cataloging each reference of a particular word in a particular work. Concordances help scholars scrutinize important texts for patterns and meaning. Other humanities applications for computers in this early era of technology included compiling dictionaries, especially for foreign or antiquated languages, and cataloging library collections.
Such types of computer usage in the humanities may seem limited at first, but they have produced some interesting results in the last few years and promise to continue to do so. As computer use and access have grown, so has the number of digitized texts of classic literary works.
The computer-based study of literary texts has established its own niche in academia. Donald Foster, an English professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, is one of the leaders in textual scholarship. In the late 1980s Foster created SHAXICON, a database that tracks all the “rare” words used by English playwright William Shakespeare. Each of these words appears in any individual Shakespeare play no more than 12 times. The words can then be cross-referenced with some 2,000 other poetic texts, allowing experienced researchers to explore when they were written, who wrote them, how the author was influenced by the works of other writers, and how the texts changed us they were reproduced over the centuries.
In late 1995 Foster’s work attracted widespread notice when he claimed that Shakespeare was the anonymous author of an obscure 578-line poem, A Funeral Elegy (1612). Although experts had made similar claims for other works in the past, Foster gained the backing of a number of prominent scholars because of his computer-base approach. If Foster’s claim holds up to long-term judgment, the poem will be one of the few additions to the Shakespearean canon in the last 100 years.
Foster’s work gained further public acclaim and validation when he was asked to help identify the anonymous author of the best-selling political novel Primary Colors (1996). After using his computer program to compare the stylistic traits of various writers with those in the novel, Foster tabbed journalist Joe Klein as the author. Soon after, Klein admitted that he was the author. Foster was also employed as an expert in the case of the notorious Unabomber, a terrorist who published an anonymous manifesto in several major newspapers in 1995.
1.This paper will mainly discuss（）.
2.which of the following is NOT true?
3.Foster identified the author of an anonymous manifesto by（）.
4.Which of the following can most probably be inferred from the passage?
5.By "access have grown" in paragraph 3, the author probably means that（）.
