Hello all,
We are very please to welcome Dr. Gabriel Egan from De Montfort University. Please come and join us for the following talk!
“Textual Studies, Text Analysis: Old and New Methods for Attributing Authorship”
Gabriel Egan, De Montfort U
Time and date: 3:30-4:30, January 13, 2016
Location: Special Collections Classroom (UVic Library) A003
Description:
Abstract: The art of assigning authors to works of unknown authorship has been systematic since the 19th century and computerized since the mid-20th. Machines are particularly adept at gathering and processing linguistic data that are too great for manual human processing. Attributions based upon instantly recognizable verbal parallels are inherently more appealing to a wider audience than those based on the mass processing of unconscious habits of writing, because verbal parallels make sense to non-specialists lacking linguistic, computational, or mathematical training. Both approaches, however, may be methodologically biased in ways that are not readily apparent. This talk will survey some established and some newer methods of authorship attribution and describe how they underpin the recent redrawing of the boundaries of the Shakespeare canon.
Bio: Gabriel Egan is one the General Editors of the New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2016. All of Shakespeare’s works have been edited afresh from the original documents so that the New Oxford Shakespeare replaces the landmark 1986 Oxford edition generally edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Egan is Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Centre for Textual Studies at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. His most recent book was ‘Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory’ for the Arden Shakespeare (2015). He co-edits the journals ‘Shakespeare’ (for the British Shakespeare Association) and ‘Theatre Notebook’ (for the Society for Theatre Research).