What separates everyday language from Art? In my view, 'art' has the power to control emotion, command attention, and inspire recollection. Not all linguistic communication meets these criteria.
Most of my research is focused on the artistic phenomenon of literary allusion, whereby one piece of writing inspires recollection of another. In order to make a reader recollect another work, a lot has to happen, especially if the writer is making reference to another artist who works in a different language.
So, how is it done? To answer that question, I take a three-pronged approach.
A big part of my research agenda concerns building software tools to analyze artistic language use. One example of such a tool is the cross-language intertextual search tool of the Tesserae project.
I also engage in literary criticism of Latin and Greek poetry and prose. I try to answer the question "How does the practice of literary imitation change over time?" using examples of imitation and commentary on imitation, both drawn from ancient Greek and Roman sources.
I write novels that make heavy use of classical material, putting the techniques I have observed into practice.