Consensus ex Machina? Consensus qua Machina!

This paper discusses whether the aim of literary computing to facilitate a scholarly ‘consensus’ on texts is realistic. A number of methodological points of principle are raised with the aid of the author‘s current research project, EPITEST, which deals with computer-aided action and plot analysis. These revolve around the need to integrate two distinct methodological paradigms in computer models which aim to simulate high-level interpretive processes: a numeric (statistical) and a semantic (hermeneutic) paradigm. Against this background the idea of a ’consensus ex machina‘ is rejected and replaced with that of a ’consensus qua machina‘, i. e. a strictly methodological consensus concerning the form of a literary text as opposed to a consensus on its ’meaning‘.