Attributing Authorship
Attributing Authorship
Recent literary scholarship has seen a shift of interest away from questions of attribution. Yet these questions remain urgent and important for any historical study of writing, and have been given a powerful new impetus by advances in statistical studies of language and the coming on line of large databases of texts in machine-searchable form. The present book is the first comprehensive survey of the field from a literary perspective to appear for forty years. It covers both traditional and computer based approaches to attribution, and evaluates each in respect of their potentialities and limitations. It revisits a number of famous controversies, including those concerning the authorship of the Homeric poems, books from the Old and New Testaments, and the plays of Shakespeare. Written with wit as well as erudition Attributing Authorship will make this intriguing field accessible for students and scholars alike.
- Coverage of both traditional and computer-based methods of attribution
- Revisits famous older problems of attribution, including Homer and Shakespeare
- Was the first overview of the field for 40 years
Product details
June 2002Paperback
9780521789486
280 pages
229 × 152 × 16 mm
0.38kg
2 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Abbreviations
- Illustrations
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- 1. Individuality and sameness
- 2. Historical survey
- 3. Defining authorship
- 4. External evidence
- 5. Internal evidence
- 6. Stylistic evidence
- 7. Gender and Authorship
- 8. Craft and science
- 9. Bibliographical evidence
- 10. Forgery and attribution
- 11. Shakespeare and Co.
- 12. Arguing attribution
- Bibliography
- Index.
