Automatic quantitative metrical analysis of Spanish Poetry with Rantanplan: a first approach

In this paper, we present a quantitative approach to Spanish poetry and versification through the application of our own automatic metrical tool, Rantanplan, to the complete poetic works of four Early Modern Spanish poets. The entire poetry by four representative authors of the period —Garcilaso de la Vega (1503-1536), Fernando de Herrera (1534-1597), Luis de Góngora (1561-1627), and Lope de Vega (1562-1635)—was automatically processed and stress positions were extracted. Thanks to the development of a new feature in Rantanplan for stanza identification, we could detect metrical structures as well. A quantitative analysis of stress positions, line lengths and stanzas used per author follows, aiming at modeling their complete metrical profile. Additionally, we present an application of the obtained metrical information for authorship attribution.