Graphic Visualization in Literary Text Interpretation

This article discusses a possible approach combining existing technologies for Natural Language Processing (NLP), Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR) and Data Visualization in a coherent Decision Support System (DSS) aimed to formulate and verify specific interpretative hypotheses about a certain text. The approach chosen for developing this system implies (i.) the customization and integration of existing tools for automatic text annotation (first of all, linguistic, lexicographic and semantic) and (ii.) the construction of a user-friendly and highly expressive GUI. The interface is conceived to allow users to (i.) upload the text/s they are studying, (ii) run the desired annotation tools, and (iii.) visually interact with the resulting multi-layered network to explore the network, proof-read the results of the automatic annotations and add missing elements and/or relations between elements.