The Automatic Quantitative Metrical Analysis of Spanish Poetry with Rantanplan: A Preliminary Approach

In this paper, we present a quantitative approach to Spanish poetry and versification

based on the application of our own automatic metrical tool, Rantanplan, to the

complete poetic works of four early modern Spanish poets. All of the poetry of these

four representative authors—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 stanza identification feature of Rantanplan, we were able to detect metrical

structures as well. By completing a quantitative analysis of the stress positions, line

lengths, and stanzas used by each author, we aim to model their complete metrical

profiles.