Where to track down sources on doing stylometry on Elizabethan drama?
March 11, 2011 1:42 PM Subscribe
ResearchFilter. Help me find sources that talk about the difficulty of determining a work's authorship when the original text is lost to history.
I'm in the middle of a PhD thesis right now. The short version is that it involves using stylometric techniques to attribute authorship to different sections of collaboratively-written Elizabethan plays. The shorter version is that I'm trying to take a play written by (probably) two authors and try to find out which part might have been written by which author.
I'm working on a chapter right now that revolves around how hard it is to distinguish one author's style from another when the original manuscripts are unavailable. For those of you who don't know, almost no Elizabethan play manuscripts survive, and all the texts that exist have been through the hands of editors, compositors, etc., over the last four hundred years. Trying to determine an author's individual style when all traces of the original spelling, punctuation, lineation, and so on have been lost is difficult at best and near-impossible at worst.
I'm trying to find sources (journal papers, books, drunken professors' rants, what have you) that discuss this sort of problem. I'm looking in the usual places like JSTOR and the MLA Bibliography, and I've got one researcher's work I'm going to chase down (Joseph Rudman), but I was wondering if anyone had any other good leads on this sort of thing. Thanks in advance for any and all pointers.
I'm in the middle of a PhD thesis right now. The short version is that it involves using stylometric techniques to attribute authorship to different sections of collaboratively-written Elizabethan plays. The shorter version is that I'm trying to take a play written by (probably) two authors and try to find out which part might have been written by which author.
I'm working on a chapter right now that revolves around how hard it is to distinguish one author's style from another when the original manuscripts are unavailable. For those of you who don't know, almost no Elizabethan play manuscripts survive, and all the texts that exist have been through the hands of editors, compositors, etc., over the last four hundred years. Trying to determine an author's individual style when all traces of the original spelling, punctuation, lineation, and so on have been lost is difficult at best and near-impossible at worst.
I'm trying to find sources (journal papers, books, drunken professors' rants, what have you) that discuss this sort of problem. I'm looking in the usual places like JSTOR and the MLA Bibliography, and I've got one researcher's work I'm going to chase down (Joseph Rudman), but I was wondering if anyone had any other good leads on this sort of thing. Thanks in advance for any and all pointers.
Best answer: Yes, Brian Vickers - Part I of his Shakespeare, Co-Author (Oxford 2002) is an excellent 125+ page overview.
The literature librarian at your university is likely the best person to help you find ways to sort through the large body of literature on this topic.
posted by zepheria at 3:15 PM on March 11, 2011
The literature librarian at your university is likely the best person to help you find ways to sort through the large body of literature on this topic.
posted by zepheria at 3:15 PM on March 11, 2011
Best answer: Have you dug into the classics of textual editing? Greg, Bowers? Charlton Hinman? Get the Tanselle syllabus [PDF] and work through the readings.
posted by Orinda at 7:34 PM on March 11, 2011
posted by Orinda at 7:34 PM on March 11, 2011
Oh and after you've taken a deep draught from the Greg-Bowers-Tanselle stream of textual criticism, you should have a chaser of McGann. At least.
posted by Orinda at 7:41 PM on March 11, 2011
posted by Orinda at 7:41 PM on March 11, 2011
Best answer: OK, seeing as you're at PhD level (at KCL?), I'll assume that you know all about the work of Vickers and Gary Taylor and my former PhD supervisor Mac Jackson, in terms of methodology. What you're after is more sceptical work on personal style and the problems involved in authorial attribution itself. Am I correct in this?
The main sceptic to look at would be Jeff Masten, whose Textual Intercourse (Cambridge UP, 1997) Vickers eviscerates in Shakespeare, Co-Author. There's also Gordon McMullan, of course, who discusses problems of attributing authorship in a 1996 article in Textus, "'Our Whole Life is Like a Play': Collaboration and the Problem of Editing," and in his 2000 Arden edition of Henry VIII. A bit older, but still relevant: Cyrus Hoy, "Critical and Aesthetic Problems of Collaboration in Renaissance Drama," Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 19 (1976).
Get in contact with me if you want to discuss this further: my own MA and PhD research was on a very similar topic ...
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:18 AM on March 12, 2011
The main sceptic to look at would be Jeff Masten, whose Textual Intercourse (Cambridge UP, 1997) Vickers eviscerates in Shakespeare, Co-Author. There's also Gordon McMullan, of course, who discusses problems of attributing authorship in a 1996 article in Textus, "'Our Whole Life is Like a Play': Collaboration and the Problem of Editing," and in his 2000 Arden edition of Henry VIII. A bit older, but still relevant: Cyrus Hoy, "Critical and Aesthetic Problems of Collaboration in Renaissance Drama," Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 19 (1976).
Get in contact with me if you want to discuss this further: my own MA and PhD research was on a very similar topic ...
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:18 AM on March 12, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks for the answers, everybody. I should have mentioned that I'm familiar with Vickers already--his Shakespeare, Co-Author got me started on this whole topic, and if I can do a little shameless name-dropping, I know him in real life. (I'm doing a little work with his research assistant at the University of London, and we keep running into each other at seminars here in London.)
This was tremendously helpful, and you may just have contributed to me going to my first-ever academic conference as a participant--I asked the same question on a mailing list I belong to, and one of the responses asked me to propose a paper on the topic for a conference in August. Simultaneously really cool and kind of terrifying.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:33 AM on March 14, 2011
This was tremendously helpful, and you may just have contributed to me going to my first-ever academic conference as a participant--I asked the same question on a mailing list I belong to, and one of the responses asked me to propose a paper on the topic for a conference in August. Simultaneously really cool and kind of terrifying.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:33 AM on March 14, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by verstegan at 3:06 PM on March 11, 2011