Investigating Literary Motifs in Ancient and Medieval Novels with Large Language Models

Abstract

The Greek fictional narratives often termed love novels or romances, ranging from the first century CE to the middle of the 15th century, have long been considered as similar in many ways, not least in the use of particular literary motifs. By applying the use of fine-tuned large language models, this study aims to investigate which motifs exactly that the texts in this corpus have in common, and in which ways they differ from each other. The results show that while some motifs persist throughout the corpus, others fluctuate in frequency, indicating certain trends or external influences. Conclusively, the method proves to adequately extract literary motifs according to a set definition, providing data for both quantitative and qualitative analyses.