CAPÍTULO VIII ACTUACIONES JUDICIALES
LÍMITES DE LA LEY PROCESAL EN EL TIEMPO Y EL ESPACIO Introducción
6.1.1 : Authenticity criteria and the identification of style
This introduction to chapters 6-8 builds on chapter 2 of the thesis, in which four types of study of Latin literature dating from the period ca 650-820 were reviewed; that period
encompassed the whole of Paul’s life. Those studies address, in various ways, the problem of identifying the features which characterise the style in which a particular author (A) composes. The aim of that process of identification is to assess, with a reasonable degree of certainty, the likelihood that an unattributed work is the work of A. If there are others (B, C, etc.) who might be considered as possible authors on the basis of non-stylistic evidence, the process must also assess, for each of them, the likelihood that the work can properly be attributed to him, or whether he can be definitely eliminated from consideration.
So the question which arises is, by what process or processes of ‘nice examination and comparison with others’1018 are the characteristics of the authorial fingerprint1019 referred to in section 2.2 to be established ? To some extent, it may be possible in a particular case to base an attribution on distinctive features of the style of the candidate author, without resorting to any form of quantitative analysis. The investigator may begin from an intuitive apprehension of the candidate author’s style. However, such intuitions need to be tested by a systematic
examination of the characteristic features of the style, otherwise there is a danger of falling into the kind of circular reasoning which is liable to lead to erroneous attributions.
The situation now discussed illustrates the difficulties created where attributions are based on a perception (whether arising from ‘intuitive apprehension’ or otherwise) of the putative author’s style:
(1) a perception of the style of author A has led to a received opinion that a body of work consisting of (say) twenty compositions (W1---W20) is authentically the work of A (‘the canon’);
(2) that opinion creates a further perception that a hitherto unattributed work (X) is the work of A;
(3) non-stylistic evidence comes to light which demonstrates that (say) work W13 is not, or is highly unlikely to be, the work of A.
1018 The full quotation from Boswell’s Life of Johnson, as given in section 2.2, is “Why, Sir, I think every man whatever has a peculiar style, which may be discovered by nice examination and
comparison with others: but a man must write a great deal to make his style obviously discernible”.
1019 M. Eder, ‘Style markers in authorship attribution: a cross-language study of the authorial fingerprint,’
Such non-stylistic evidence would cast doubt not only on the inclusion of X in the canon, but on whether each of the other nineteen works has been justifiably included, and whether there was any basis on which the perception of A’s style could have been properly founded.
Similar situations arise in other cultural fields, and an essay whose subject is the very large number of works erroneously attributed to the Renaissance composer Josquin des Près (b. ca 1450, d. 1521) on stylistic grounds provides a valuable commentary on the dangers of over- reliance on stylistic arguments for authorship1020. A study which contradicted the received opinion on a particular attribution is discussed in the following terms:
The crucial aspect …is that of Josquin’s style-or rather, the current perception of it. No musicologist would endorse an attribution to Josquin without at least considering its stylistic plausibility. Yet the modern notion of what is ‘typical’ of him must necessarily be based on works already accepted as his—or rather, works which have not been called into question. Hence we are continually in danger of accepting works on a stylistic basis that might itself have to come under review. For instance, we might decide to accept work X because of its stylistic similarity to works W12 and W131021., and might see no problem because the latter are central Josquin works, firmly backed by the scholarly consensus. Yet our decision…would have to be reviewed as soon as W12 and W13 themselves came under suspicion.1022
The discussion continues with the observation that the evidence for Josquin as the composer of the motet Absalon, fili mi is alarmingly weak in spite of the fact that it has featured very
prominently in the received picture of Josquin. That attribution first appeared in a German print from 15401023 compiled by an editor known to have been responsible for several other questionable ascriptions. All later attributions have been conclusively shown to be based on that print, yet the music displays distinctive notational features more plausibly pointing to Josquin’s Franco-Flemish contemporary, Pierre de la Rue (1452-1518), in whose circle the earliest and most authoritative copy was written. And yet, in spite of the absence of any
substantive evidence of Josquin’s authorship, Absalon, fili mi has been recorded and marketed as one of Josquin’s compositions and widely accepted as ‘a cornerstone in the present-day
perception of Josquin’s musical genius’.
1020 Adapted from R.C. Wegman, ‘Who was Josquin ?’, in The Josquin Companion, ed. R. Sherr, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 29.
1021 Wegman’s notation, changed to correspond to that of the illustrative situation.
1022 J. Rifkin, ‘Problems of Authorship in Josquin: Some Impolitic Observations, with a postscript on
Absalon, fili mi’, Josquin Proceedings (1986), 46-7.
In this context it is pertinent to recall that the attribution to Paul the Deacon of the hymn to S. John the Baptist, ut queant laxis, actually originated from the unreliable pen of Peter the Deacon, was embellished many years later with a legend lifted from the Gospel story of the restoration of the voice of the saint’s father, Zacharias, and has nevertheless been accepted by several commentators and anthologists despite the total lack of any direct evidence of authorship.1024 The purpose of that comment is not to deny Paul’s authorship but to emphasise the need to base attributions on reasoning based on evidence, whether direct or indirect, rather than uncritically accepting previous attributions.
Such situations can be avoided by assembling a body of work which can be securely attributed to A by non-stylistic evidence, examining that body of work and identifying its distinctive lexical, metrical or other stylistic features. Such a body of work is referred to in what follows, as a ‘comparison sample’, designated C. Other candidate works for attribution to A can then be examined by comparing their lexical, metrical or other stylistic traits with those of the group C, all of whose members meet one or more non-stylistic criteria of authenticity. This approach was adopted in two of the major studies reviewed in Chapter 2, those by Schaller on Theodulf of Orleans1025 and by Burghardt on Alcuin1026. Schaller’s study1027 contains a section devoted to authenticity criticism (Echtheitskritik)1028, and he attributes a poem to Theodulf if it meets any one of his selected authenticity criteria. In that way, Schaller identified twenty-four of the seventy-nine poems included in Dümmler’s edition1029 as meeting one of those criteria, and concluded that twenty-nine of the remainder had sufficient resemblances of style and content to the comparison sample to be safely attributable to Theodulf, and a further thirteen to be highly probably attributable to him. Burghardt’s study of Alcuin adopts the same approach, though his authenticity criteria differ somewhat from those selected by Schaller. This is partly because Alcuin, unlike Theodulf, included verse compositions in some of his prose works, and many others were preserved with his letters; Burghardt accepted such inclusion or preservation as a valid authenticity criterion. Chapter 3 contains a discussion of the authenticity criteria used in this study. Table 3.1 identifies the selected authenticity criteria and Table 3.2 lists the criteria met by the twenty-eight poems which are attributed to Paul by both Dümmler and Neff.
1024 The attribution is discussed in detail in Chapter 5, section 5.6.
1025 D. Schaller, ‘Philologische Untersuchungen zu den Gedichten Theodulf von Orleans’, Deutsches
Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 18, no. 1 (1962), 13-91. This study is referred to subsequently by
the short title Schaller, ‘Theodulf’.
1026 H.-D. Burghardt, Philologische Untersuchungen zu den Gedichten Alcuins, (Diss. Phil., Heidelberg, 1960).
1027 Schaller, ‘Theodulf’, is discussed in chapter 2, study 2.2, section 2.3.4. 1028 Ibid., 15-31.
1029 E. Dümmler, ed., Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, vol. I (Berlin: Weidmann, 1881), 437-576.
6.1.2 : Stylistics, stylometry and statistical analysis; an overview
The term ‘stylistics’ embraces all non-quantitative methods of examination, for instance, the rejection of a candidate author because the text contains features recognisable as being foreign to his style, or acceptance due to recognition of a combination of features known to be
characteristic of his style.1030 Examples of such stylistic features are word lengths, the use or avoidance of certain words or phrases, techniques for forming compound words and preferences for particular word orders, sentence structures, or rhetorical devices.
When the study is not confined to recognition of alien or characteristic features of the examined text, but involves the quantitative measurement, tabulation and analysis of those features, the investigator has entered the realm of stylometry. The history of stylistic and stylometric studies has been recounted in the extremely useful general texts by Love, Williams, Morton and Kenny1031, each of which provides some insight into various numerical and
statistical techniques. This study makes that distinction because not all previous investigations have involved the calculation of statistical parameters. In this study, ‘numerical’ refers to simple counting and tabulation of the occurrence of relevant features, whereas ‘statistical‘ is used to describe studies which involve the calculation of parameters that define, for example, the average (mean) occurrence of stylistic features, the variability of their occurrence (standard deviation), the order of frequency (rank) in which they occur, or the extent to which the features in question are observed to occur differs from that in which they would be expected to occur in the event that the hypothesis tested by the investigator was true (goodness of fit or
homogeneity, for which the χ2 test is employed).
Each of the four studies cited provides a blend of insight into numerical and statistical techniques and a review of studies which had been carried out before, or which were in progress at, the time of their writing. The selected studies portray the then current state of the stylistic art and stylometric science, and illustrate the stylometric methods which had been employed. They clearly show that the great majority of such studies were concerned with prose works, and that the stylistic features most frequently studied were word and sentence length, and aspects of vocabulary which included the frequency of occurrence of selected words and the relative proportions of various parts of speech in the works investigated. A similar picture emerges from two comprehensive bibliographies contained in papers published in 19941032 and
1030 H. Love, ‘Stylistic evidence’, chapter 6, in Attributing Authorship, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 99-101.
1031 H. Love, Attributing Authorship; C.B. Williams, Style and Vocabulary: Numerical Studies (London: Charles Griffin & Co. Ltd.,1970); A.Q. Morton, Literary Detection (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978); A. Kenny, The Computation of Style (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982).
2007.1033 A generally recognised starting-point for the use of numerical methods in attribution studies is the suggestion of the English mathematician Augustus de Morgan in 1851 that the problem of authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews could be solved by comparing the average number of letters per word in the Greek text of that epistle with that of the other Pauline
epistles though, as Love observes, he did not actually carry out those calculations himself1034; the work was carried out almost a century later by Wake.1035 Tabular and graphical methods of representing features of style, in particular, word-lengths, became more common in the 1880s, with the American professor Thomas Mendenhall at the forefront of this development,1036 which he attempted to apply to the question whether plays attributed to Shakespeare were written by either Bacon or Marlowe.1037 Particularly significant developments in stylometry, using
statistical methods, were made during the mid-twentieth century by Yule1038. 1039 and by
Mosteller and Wallace1040 in their important study on the disputed authorship of the Federalist Papers.
While the stylometric studies summarised above were largely devoted to prose works, numerical methods had also been employed by the German scholar, Wilhelm Drobisch, in a comparative study of the use of hexameters by Latin poets, as long ago as 18661041 and continued in 1868.1042 In the first, he studied samples of works by Virgil and fourteen other poets, six of whom he described as Virgilian poets1043, and eight as non-Virgilian poets.1044 In that study, he calculated the percentage of occurrence of each of the sixteen possible
combinations of dactyls (D) and spondees (S) in the first four feet of a hexameter line and it appears from his data that all the poets, with the exception of Ennius,1045 most frequently
1033 J. Grieve,’ Quantitative authorship attribution: an evaluation of techniques’, Literary and
Linguistic Computing, 22 no.3 (2007): 251-70.
1034 Love, ‘Craft and science’, chapter 8, in Attributing authorship , 132-33.
1035 W.C. Wake,’ The Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles: A contribution from statistical analysis,’
Hibbert Journal 47 (1950), 50-55.
1036 T.C. Mendenhall, ‘On the characteristic curves of composition’, Science 214 (1887): 237-49.
1037 T.C. Mendenhall, ‘A mechanical solution to a literary problem’, Popular Science Monthly 60 (1901): 97- 105.
1038G.U. Yule, ‘On sentence-length as a statistical characteristic of style in prose, with application to two cases of disputed authorship’ Biometrika 30 (1938): 363-390.
1039 G.U. Yule, The Statistical Study of Literary Vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944). 1040F. Mosteller and D.L. Wallace, ‘Inference and disputed authorship,’ Journal of the American Statistical
Association 58 (1963): 275-309.
1041 W.M. Drobisch, ‘Ein statisticher Versuch über die formen des lateinischer Hexameters’ Berichte über
die Verhandlungen der Köningl-Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, Philologische-Historische Klasse 18,
(1866), 75-139.
1042 W.M. Drobisch, ‘Weiter Untersuchungen über die formen des Hexameters des Vergil, Horaz und Homer,’ Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Köningl-Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften,
Philologische- Historische Klasse 20, (1868), 16-53.
1043 Lucretius, Horace, Manilius, Persius, Lucan and Juvenal.
1044 Ennius, Cicero, Catullus, Ovid, Horace, Statius, Silius Italicus and Claudianus.
employed patterns in which the first foot was a dactyl, particularly favouring the combinations DSSS, DSDS and DDSS. Williams1046 has summarised and analysed Drobisch’s data, but it is not immediately apparent either from the original data or Williams’ analysis whether metrical patterns can provide a sound basis for distinguishing works of the poets considered by Drobisch to be Virgilian from those he considered to be non-Virgilian. Indeed, a subsequent study by Altmann1047 led to the conclusion that Drobisch was incorrect in assuming that there was a group of ‘Virgilian’ poets distinguishable from the others by the homogeneity of their style.
More recent specialist studies have been concerned with statistical analysis of prose rhythms and of metrical patterns in quantitative verse. Studies of prose rhythms include Tore Janson’s survey of the field of mediaeval Latin prose,1048 Neil Wright’s study of the Epistulae of
Columbanus,1049 and Tunberg’s study of clausulae in the works of Lorenzo Valla.1050 Janson’s study is relevant to the present work in that he had pioneered the approach of comparing the observed frequency (O) of a rhythmical pattern in an author’s work with its expected frequency (E), and had argued that chance could be ruled out if O significantly exceeded E. This argument is discussed in Wright’s study, which embraces vocabulary, sentence structure, the use of rhetorical figures and of hyperbaton, and includes data on the occurrence of various types of cursus. Wright addresses the question whether the percentage occurrence of various cursus rhythms in the Epistulae of Columbanus could have come about by chance, and expresses scepticism about the validity of Janson’s method of calculating expected frequencies of occurrence. He also remarks that he has found the use of the method inconclusive in distinguishing between Columbanus and authors whose works have final cursus similar to those of Columbanus.1051 Tunberg’s study is of interest since his analysis includes calculations of χ2 for expected and observed occurrences of clausulae in the selected works of Valla. It is also appropriate to mention a recent statistical study1052 of one poem, angustae vitae fugiunt (ML 9). However, that study is not an attribution study; its authors assume that the poem is the work of Paul. It proceeds on the basis that traditional philology suggests connexions to Catullus,
1046 Williams, Style and Vocabulary: Numerical Studies, 116-20.
1047 G. Altmann, ‘The Homogeneity of Metric Patterns in Hexameter’, in Hexameter Studies, R. Grotjahn, (ed.), Quantitative Linguistics (11) (Studienverlag Brockmeyer: Bochum, 1981), 137-150.
1048 T. Janson, Prose Rhythms in Mediaeval Latin from the 9th to the 13th Century (Stockholm: Almquist and
Wiksell, 1975).
1049 N. Wright, Columbanus’s Epistulae’, in Columbanus: Studies on the Latin Writings, ed. M. Lapidge, (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 1997), 29-92.
1050 T.O. Tunberg, ‘A study of clausulae in selected works of Lorenzo Valla,’ Humanistica Lovaniensis 41 (1992), 104- 33.
1051 N.Wright, Columbanus’ Epistulae, 55-57.
1052 C. Forstall, S. Jacobson and W. Scheirer, ‘Evidence of Intertextuality: Investigating Paul the Deacon’s
Angustae Vitae’, Literary and Linguistic Computing, 26(2) (2011), 285-96. Pre-print version accessed