The Walt Whitman Archive
Resources
Tools
TokenX, created by Brian Pytlik Zillig, is a powerful text analysis, visualization, and play tool that has been customized for use on the Walt Whitman Archive. The text base for the Archive customization currently includes the six American editions of Leaves of Grass published in Whitman's lifetime and the deathbed edition of 1891–1892.
TokenX allows users to experience text in new ways. Specifically, it uses Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations (XSLT) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) to mark each word across the editions of Leaves of Grass individually as a token. With the texts tokenized, the computer can be instructed to perform a myriad of functions and gather a wide range of information about Whitman's work. TokenX currently supports the following features:
- text highlighting based on patterns in words
- keyword in context
- replacing words with blocks
- word concordances sorted alphabetically or by frequency
- word usage statistics
- word substitution
- user-selected replacement of words with images
- creative exploration
TokenX and Whitman Scholarship
To gain a sense of TokenX and its possibilities for Whitman studies, please consult Matt Cohen's essay, "Transgenic Deformation: Literary Translation and the Digital Archive," which includes a discussion of the use of TokenX for the manipulation of Armando Vasseur's Spanish translation of Leaves of Grass.
Use TokenX
To begin using the Whitman Archive customization of TokenX, click here.
About
TokenX was developed with the support of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Arts and Humanities Enhancement Fund and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities.
We would appreciate any response or suggestions you may have that can help future developments with TokenX. Please send comments and suggestions to Ken Price, co-editor of the Walt Whitman Archive, at kprice2@unl.edu; Brett Barney, Senior Associate editor, at bbarney2@unl.edu; and Brian Pytlik Zillig, creator of TokenX, at bzillig1@unl.edu.