Maths Meets Myths: Quantitative Approaches to Ancient Narratives

Abstract

This volume grew partly out of our workshops, but it is not a traditional set of proceedings. Instead, we selected contributions which, from a scientific point of view, were most firmly established or, from a humanities point of view, were most “ripe” for data harvesting. We also approached eminent academics who were not involved in the Maths Meets Myths workshops. Authors were asked to present contributions which included one or more of the following categories: (a) results of an application of state-of-the-art quantitative approaches to sources from the past (folktales, fables, myths, legends, sagas, epics and histories), (b) a description of a new quantitative method which has been applied elsewhere and could be applied to the sources we’re interested in here and (c) a description of sources which would be amenable to future quantitative treatment and why they are important.