Francesco Galofaro, Magdalena Maria Kubas, “Dei Genitrix: A Generative Grammar for Traditional Litanies,” in: 7th Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative, ed. by Mark Finlayson, Ben Miller, Antonio Lieto, Remi Ronfard, Stephen Ware (Wadern: Dagstuhl, 2016).
The object of the present paper is a study of two traditional litanies, Litany of the Saints and Litany of Loreto, in their most ancient attested form. We will design a narrative grammar to show how their litanic structures can be generated. We propose the notion of n-selection, a narrative rule which cannot be reduced to syntax or semantics: it depends on culture. We will test the grammar on the Litany to the Divine Mercy, written by Saint Faustina Kowalska in the twentieth century. Our purpose is to identify the rules of the genre which allow its reproduction in more recent versions.