A Stylostatistical Study of Goethe-Schiller-Correspondence and the Authorship Problem of the Lalebuch (1597)

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This research has two purposes : (1) to provide a comparison of some statistical methods (in particular multivariate analysis) applied to philological objects and to estimate their effiency ; (2) using most effective techniques, to solve the authorship question of the Lalebuch, published anonymously in 1597.The representative philological objects for methodological experiments is the collected letters of Goethe and Schiller corresponded in the years 1794-98, in which the greatest German classical Authors exchanged frankly and friendly their critical opinions on the same themes and topics concerning literature and thought. The same genre, almost the same form and theme, two quite different personalities of the same ability-rank etc, are best conditions for methodological examination of styl-statistical approach. After an investigation of sentence-length finding that the sentence-length follows the log-normal distribution, I have selected 20 non-contextual function words for multivariate … More analysis : the count of these words are the variables used for discriminant analysis, principal component analysis and cluster analysis of G-S correspondence (divided into 25 Goethe- and 26 Schiller-samples). PCA with component-score plots shows on the one side G-groups and on the other side S-groups : one can distinguish one group from the other more effectivly with the help of the result from discriminant analysis.The conclusions about the authorship problem of the Lalebuch have rather some similarity to Honneger's hypothesis that J.Fischart wrote this satirical masterpeace of Volksbuch (folktales), but the reasons for the conclusions are quite different. He regards the one year later appeared and more proliferous clone book Schildburger for more authoritative than Lalebuch and assumes further the existence of an unfound original print. For lack of evidence and persuasive power these theses are not to support. The statistical analysis showed above all that the first and the second part of the tale are not homogeneous, so I have decided to divide the text-data of Lalebuch into two samples (L1, L2) and to compare with samples of Fischart's works, namely Eulenspiegel Reimenweiβ, Geschichtk-litterung etc. After the comparative analysis and statistical tests of the sentence-length distribution, of the binomial predicates in subordinate clauses, and of the first symbol of words, the component-score plot of the PCA (25 variables) showed most evidently that L1 is surrounded by Fischart's groupe samples, while L2 stands quit apart from others. On the basis of the mentioned data, Fischart is extremely likely to have written the first part of the disputed Lalebuch, but the second part is supposedly left by him as unfinished story which some one posthumously revised and published. Less