Beowulf single-authorship claim is unsupported

0548581 - ÚČL 2022 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Plecháč, Petr - Cooper, A. - Nagy, B. - Šela, A.
Beowulf single-authorship claim is unsupported.
Nature Human Behaviour. Roč. 5, 11. 11. (2021), s. 1481-1483. ISSN 2397-3374. E-ISSN 2397-3374
Institutional support: RVO:68378068
Keywords : authorship attribution * stylometry * Beowulf
OECD category: Specific literatures
Impact factor: 24.252, year: 2021
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01222-5

Neidorf et al. 2019’s quantitative stylometric profile of Old English verse used several novel methods. Their study supports the unitary authorship of Beowulf and Cynewulfian authorship of Andreas, based on the ostensible homogeneity of a variety of features. The authors provided full access to their code and data, which demonstrates a praiseworthy commitment to open and replicable science. However, we argue that the methods presented are unsuitable for their purposes. Our replication study uses their unmodified data and text preprocessing steps, identifies errors in their analyses, questions the reliability of their results, and shows significant stylistic heterogeneity in Beowulf.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0324648