Cicero, Sigonio, and Burrows: investigating the authenticity of the Consolatio

Autore: Forsyth, R.S. & Holmes, D.I. & Tse, E.K.
Titolo: Cicero, Sigonio, and Burrows: investigating the authenticity of the Consolatio
Rivista/Miscellanea: Literary and Linguistic Computing, 14(3)
Anno edizione: 1999
Pagine: 375-400
Parole chiave: Authenticité - Autenticità - Authenticity
Recensione:

Article souvent cité et commenté, notamment dans : J. Grieve, Quantitative Authorship Attribution: An Evaluation of Techniques Lit Linguist Computing, September 1, 2007, 22(3): 251 – 270 – C. Stamou, Stylochronometry: Stylistic Development, Sequence of Composition, and Relative Dating Lit Linguist Computing, June 1, 2008; 23(2): 181 – 199.

Descrizione: [Abstract] When his daughter Tullia died in 45 BC, the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) was assailed by grief, which he attempted to assuage by writing a philosophical work now known as the Consolatio. Despite its high reputation in the classical world, only fragments of this text - in the form of quotations by subsequent authors - are known to have survived the fall of Rome. However, in 1583 a book was printed in Venice purporting to be a rediscovery of Cicero's Consolatio. Its editor was a prominent humanist scholar and Ciceronian stylist called Carlo Sigonio. Some of Sigonio's contemporaries, notably Antonio Riccoboni, voiced doubts about the authenticity of this work; and since that time scholarly opinion has differed over the genuineness of this work; and since that time scholarly opinion has differed over the genuineness of the 1583 Consolatio. The main aim of this study is to bring modern stylometric methods to bear on this question, to see whether internal linguistic evidence supports the belief that the Consolatio of 1583 is a fake, very probably perpetrated by Sigonio himself. A secondary objective is to test the application of methods previously used almost exclusively on English texts to a language of the 1583 Consolatio is extremely uncharacteristic of Cicero, and indeed that the text is much more likely to have been written during the Renaissance than in classical times. The evidence that Sigonio himself was the author is also strong, though not conclusive. [Bio] RS Forsyth : Department of Computing and Information Systems, Faculty of Science, Technology and Design, University of Luton - DI Holmes : The College of New Jersey, - EK Tse : University of California, Los Angeles
Sigla autore: Forsyth & al. 1999