The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana, attributed to John Milton: A Statistical Investigation

1998; Oxford University Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/llc/13.2.77

ISSN

1477-4615

Autores

Fiona J. Tweedie, David I. Holmes, Thomas N. Corns,

Tópico(s)

Publishing and Scholarly Communication

Resumo

This report describes an objective, stylometric investigation into the provenance of De Doctrina Christiana, a theological treatise attributed to John Milton since its discovery in 1823. The question of attribution was re-opened in 1991, provoking a series of papers, one of which makes a plea for analysis of the kind we offer. Frequently occurring words are found to be effective authorial discriminators betweenMilton and the control texts. A clear difference is found between texts from polemic and exegetical genres, and samples from De Doctrina Christiana form into two groups. This heterogeneity forms the last part of the amanuenses, but the Epistle appears to be markedly more Miltonic than does the rest. In addition, postulated insertions into Chapter 10 of Book 1 appear more typical of Milton.

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