Dramatic texts come with a natural structure of acts, scenes and speech clearly assigned to characters that lends itself to computational analysis: These explicit structures allow for straightforward formalizations without extensive preparatory work. Work on drama has therefore always been at the forefront of research in computational literary studies, with its pioneers analyzing drama quantitatively long before the digital age. Today, increasingly large digital text corpora are available and computational literary studies aims at a higher-scaled view on literary history, promising to analyze thousands of literary texts simultaneously. After decades of exploring the possibilities offered by computational methods, the field is now undergoing a phase of consolidation that takes stock of achievements and opportunities and critically reflects the computational methods and interpretations derived from data. Building on insights from the fields' tradition and current research approaches, this volume provides an overview of the status quo of computational drama analysis and explores possible routes for the future.

Focusing on particular cases of Anglo-German exchange in the period known as the Sattelzeit (1750-1850), this volume of essays explores how drama and poetry played a central role in the development of British and German literary cultures. With increased numbers of people studying foreign languages, engaging in translation work, and traveling between Britain and Germany, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gave rise to unprecedented opportunities for intercultural encounters and transnational dialogues. While most research on Anglo-German exchange has focused on the novel, this volume seeks to reposition drama and poetry within discourses of national identity, intercultural transfer, and World Literature. The essays in the collection cohere in affirming the significance of poetry and drama as literary forms that shaped German and British cultures in the period. The essays also consider the nuanced movement of texts and ideas across genres and cultures, the formation and reception of poetic personae, and the place of illustration in cross-cultural, textual exchange.