In her introduction to a 1962 edition, May Swenson describes the Spoon River Anthology as “fascinating if nothing else than to untangle the lurid web of small-town scandals provocatively placed before us.” Her words perfectly convey the reading experience of the work, and thanks to this project, that very web of scandals is now available to explore interactively, together with its full dataset, making the narrative structure tangible and accessible.
This project explores the interpoetic network of the Spoon River Anthology by visualizing the mention interactions among its characters, aiming to provide an open and interactive resource, allowing anyone, scholars, students, or literature enthusiasts, to explore the narrative structure of the Anthology.
Reference: May Swenson, “Introduction,” in Spoon River Anthology (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 12, quoted in John E. Hallwas, “Introduction,” in Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology: An Annotated Edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 1–2.
Access the Dataset on GitHub