Notes

1. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Research Foundation of Flanders (FWO) at the University of Antwerp. He also would like to thank Frank Willaert and Walter Daelemans as well as the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.

2. Saskia Murk Jansen, ‘Hadewijch’s Mengeldichten: an experiment in statistical method’, Dutch Crossing 35 (1988), pp. 26-39.

3. Usually, only writing style is considered in stylometry. For an excellent overview see David I. Holmes, ‘The Evolution of Stylometry in Humanities scholarship’, in Literary and Linguistic Computing 13:3 (1998), pp. 111-17.

4. For an accessible introduction see A Companion to Digital Humanities , ed. by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004).

5. A recent overview can be found in: Efstathios Stamatatos, ‘A Survey of Modern Authorship Attribution Methods’, in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60:3 (2009), pp. 538-56.

6. See for instance: Benno Stein, Nedim Lipka and Peter Prettenhoffer, ‘Intrinsic Plagiarism Analysis’, in Language Resources and Evaluation 45:1 (2011), pp. 63-82.

7. Disparate yet interesting examples concerning medieval authorship include: Antonio M. García and Javier C. Martín, ‘Function Words in Authorship Attribution Studies’, in Literary and Linguistic Computing 22:1 (2007), pp. 49-66 for Old English; Friedrich M. Dimpel, ‘Der Verlust der ‘Eneas’-Handschrift als Fiktion. Eine computergestützte, textstatistische Untersuchung’, in Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 61:1 (2006), pp. 87-102 for German; John R. Allen, ‘On the Authenticity of the Baligant Episode in the Chanson de Roland’, in Computers in the Humanities, ed. by John L. Mitchel (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1974), pp. 65-72 for French.

8. An English discussion of the Lancelot compilation in Bart Besamusca, The Book of Lancelot. The Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation and the Medieval Tradition of Narrative Cycles (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003). For Petrus Naghel, consult Geert H.M. Claassens, ‘Bible translator of 1360 (fl. mid-14th c.)’, in Medieval Germany: An Encyclopaedia, ed. by John M. Jeep (New York: Garland, 2001).

9. A very interesting recent Dutch-language overview of the matter (partially overlapping with the present one) is presented in Frans Hinskens and Karina van Dalen-Oskam, ‘Kwantitatieve benaderingen in het taal- en letterkundig onderzoek. Een ruwe schets’, in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 123:1 (2007), pp. 1-21. Another recent state-of-the-art article on quantitative studies is Karina van Dalen-Oskam, ‘Digital Resources and Computational Methods’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 130: Sonderheft (2011), pp. 375-390.

10. Frederick Mosteller and David L. Wallace, Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1964).

11. A general discussion of (non-)traditional authorship attribution in Harold Love, Attributing Authorship: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

A more detailed discussion and critique of the traditional method can be found in in Mike Kestemont, ‘De meesters van de Spiegel. Auteursonderscheiding op basis van het frequente rijmwoord in het aandeel van Utenbroeke en Maerlant in de “Spiegel historiael”’, in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 127:2 (2011), pp. 97-120.

12. An introduction to the use of function words in authorship attribution in José Nilo G. Binongo, ‘Who Wrote the 15th Book of Oz? An Application of Multivariate Analysis to Authorship Attribution’, in Chance 16:2 (2003), pp. 26-39.

13. Note, however, that not all function words are necessarily highly frequent (cf. notwithstanding).

14. Murk Jansen, Mengeldichten. A similar early quantitative study is offered by Joris Reynaert, ‘De 10e Brief van Hadewijch en het 41ste der Limburgse Sermoenen’, in Leuvense bijdragen 63:2 (1974), pp. 137-49.

15. Murk Jansen, Mengeldichten, p. 32.

16. Evert van den Berg, Middelnederlandse versbouw en syntaxis. Ontwikkelingen in de versifikatie van verhalende poëzie ca. 1200 – ca. 1400 (Utrecht: H&S, 1983). Note that Van den Berg’s method has been continued in the first chapters of Joost van Driel, Prikkeling der zinnen. De stilistische diversiteit van de Middelnederlandse epische poëzie (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2009).

17. Willem Kuiper (ed.), Die riddere metten witten scilde. Oorsprong, overlevering en auteurschap van de Middelnederlandse ‘Ferguut’, gevolgd door een diplomatische editie en een diplomatisch glossarium (Amsterdam: Schiphouwer & Brinkman, 1989).

18. Lanceloet. De Middelnederlandse vertaling van de Lancelot en prose overgeleverd in de Lancelotcompilatie. Pars 2 (vs. 5531-10740). Met een inleidende studie over de vertaaltechniek, ed. by Bart Besamusca (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1991).

19. Cd-rom Middelnederlands. Woordenboek en teksten (The Hague: Sdu, 1998).

20. Hans Westgeest, ‘De Leidse lapidariumfragmenten: delen van Maerlants ‘cortten lapydarys’?’, in Queeste 8:1 (2001), pp. 1-26.

21. Joris Reynaert, ‘Boendale of ‘Antwerpse school’? Over het auteurschap van ‘Melibeus’ en ‘Dietsche doctrinale’’, in Al t’Antwerpen in die stad. Jan van Boendale en de literaire cultuur van zijn tijd, ed. by Wim van Anrooij and others (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2002).

22. Marjolein Hogenbirk, ‘Is hij het? Lodewijk van Velthem en de compilator’, in De boeken van Velthem. Auteur, oeuvre en overlevering, eds Bart Besamusca, Remco Sleiderink and Geert Warnar (Hilversum: Verloren, 2009).

23. Compare Jan W.J. Burgers, De rijmkroniek van Holland en zijn auteurs. Historiografie in Holland door de Anonymus (1280-1282) en de grafelijke klerk Melis Stoke (begin veertiende eeuw) (Hilversum: Historische Vereniging Holland, 1999), p. 82 (especially note 83).

24. Godfried Croenen, ‘Het dubbele auteurschap van de Grimbergsche oorlog’, in Maar er is meer: avontuurlijk lezen in de epiek van de Lage Landen. Studies voor Jozef D. Janssens, ed. by Remco Sleiderink, Veerle Uyttersprot and Bart Besamusca (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2005).

25. Karina van Dalen-Oskam and Joris van Zundert, ‘Delta for Middle Dutch – Author and Copyist Distinction in Walewein’, in Literary and Linguistic Computing 22:3 (2007), pp. 345-62.

26. Dutch Romances. 1: Roman van Walewein , ed. and trans by David Johnson and Geert Claassens (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000).

27. John Burrows, ‘‘Delta’: a Measure of Stylistic Difference and a Guide to Likely Authorship’, in Literary and Linguistic Computing 17:3 (2002), 267-87. Important theoretical interpretation in Shlomo Argamon, ‘Interpreting Burrows’s Delta: Geometric and Probabilistic Foundations’, in Literary and Linguistic Computing 23:2 (2008), pp. 131-47.

28. Cf. Mike Kestemont, Walter Daelemans and Guy de Pauw, ‘Weigh Your Words – Memory-Based Lemmatization for Middle Dutch’, in Literary and Linguistic Computing 25:3 (2010), pp. 287-301.

29. Consult Stephen Nichols, ‘Why Material Philology? Some Thoughts’, in Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 116 (1997), pp. 10-30.

30. This issue is discussed in Erik Kwakkel, ‘Die dietsche boeke die ons toebehoeren’: de kartuizers van Herne en de produktie van Middelnederlandse handschriften in de regio Brussel (1350-1400) (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), p. 7.

31. Mike Kestemont and Karina van Dalen-Oskam, ‘Predicting the past: Memory-based copyist and author discrimination in medieval epics’, in Proceedings of the Twenty-First Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence (BNAIC 2009), ed. by Toon Calders, Karl Tuyls and Mykola Pechenizkyi (Eindhoven: Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence, 2009).

32. I would like to thank Herman Brinkman for proofreading my translation.

33. Both of these important texts have recently been translated to English: Of Reynaert the Fox , ed. by André Bouwman and Bart Besamusca (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009). The translation of Karel ende Elegast is to appear in Olifant.

34. Mike Kestemont, Walter Daelemans and Dominiek Sandra, ‘Robust Rhymes? The Stability of Authorial Style in Medieval Narratives’, in Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 19:1 (2012), pp. 1-23.

35. Kestemont, ‘De meesters’, passim.

36. Mike Kestemont, ‘Velthem et al. A Stylometric Analysis of the Rhyme Words in the Account of the Battle of the Golden Spurs in the Fifth Part of the Spiegel historiael’, in Queeste 17:1 (2010), pp. 1-34.

37. Kestemont, Daelemans and Sandra, ‘Robust rhymes?’.

38. Stamatatos, ‘A Survey’, pp. 553-54.

39. Stamatatos, ‘A Survey’, p. 553.

40. Hans van Halteren and Margit Rem (Radboud University Nijmegen) are currently investigating a number of fascinating case studies in scribe recognition and authorship attribution. A number of highly recommendable publications are forthcoming. Earlier work by Margit Rem has focused on computational linguistics, although the authorship of Ferguut is discussed in Margit Rem, ‘Middelnederlands met de computer’, in Madoc 19:1 (2005), pp. 24-32.

41. Efstathios Stamatatos, Nikos Fakotakis and George Kokkinakis, ‘Automatic text categorization in terms of genre and author’, in Computational linguistics 26:4 (2000), p. 485.

Mike Kestemont (1985) is a predoctoral researcher with the Research Foundation of Flanders (FWO) at the University of Antwerp, supervised by Frank Willaert and Walter Daelemans. He is currently working on an interdisciplinary project that explores the application of quantitative methods from stylometry to authorship attribution in medieval texts. He focuses on rhyme words in Middle Dutch epic literature. His other fields of interest include oral-formulaic literature and computational linguistics, in particular the problem of spelling variation.