The anonymous 1821 translation of Goethe's Faustus

320 Pages·2015·2.79 MB·English

The anonymous 1821 translation of Goethe’s Faustus: A
cluster analytic approach

By
Refat A. Ali

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Newcastle University

September, 2015
Abstract

This study tests the hypothesis proposed by Frederick Burwick and James McKusick in
2007 that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the author of the anonymous translation of
Goethe's Faust published by Thomas Boosey in 1821. The approach to hypothesis testing
is stylometric. Specifically, function word usage is selected as the stylometric criterion,
and 80 function words are used to define a 73-dimensional function word frequency
profile vector for each text in the corpus of Coleridge's literary works and for a selection
of works by a range of contemporary English authors. Each profile vector is a point in 80-
dimensional vector space, and cluster analytic methods are used to determine the
distribution of profile vectors in the space. If the hypothesis being tested is valid, then the
profile for the 1821 translation should be closer in the space to works known to be by
Coleridge than to works by the other authors. The cluster analytic results show, however,
that this is not the case, and the conclusion is that the Burwick and McKusick hypothesis
is falsified relative to the stylometric criterion and analytic methodology used.

i
Dedication

To my aged mother,
Without your blessings on me none of my success would be
possible

ii
Acknowledgments

Thanking every individual without missing others is a daunting task. But, I would like to
express my sincere gratitude and thank all individuals who have supported me during
these years and who have become invaluable for me along this Ph.D. journey, to only
some of whom it is possible to give a particular mention here.

Above all, this thesis would be unthinkable without the commitment of Dr. Hermann
Moisl, my retired teacher and principal supervisor. He pushed me to a higher level of
stylometric research, by emphasizing the importance of quantitative methodology and
innovation, but also by having confidence in me. He was always there when needed,
mathematical training and computational techniques, always ready with solutions for the
problems, and always tolerant through the downs in the research, which God Almighty
knows how frequent they were, and I cannot thank him enough for all that he has done for
me.

I will forever be thankful to my second teacher and supervisor Prof. Michael Rossington,
firstly, for suggesting the topic of this thesis and secondly, for his insightful comments for
improving the materials related to the literary side of the thesis and for tracking down
some elusive information which led to the development of the ideas presented in it.

My deepest heartfelt appreciation goes to Prof. Charles Romesburg from the Utah State
University and Prof. James C. McKusick from the University of Montana for taking time
out from their busy schedule to answer my inquires and provide me with valuable
remarks.

I am also greatly indebted to all my APR panelists who provided me with useful
suggestions and guidelines throughout my Ph.D research project, particularly: a retired
teacher Prof. Noel Burton Roberts and Dr. Geoffrey Poole.

I owe a very important debt to Prof. Anders Holmberg who was truly an influential part of
my whole Ph.D application process: I would not be here without his indispensable
comments on my early preliminary proposal of the thesis and application which led to the
interviews then Ph.D course admission.
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Thanks are due to the Librarians of Robinson library-Newcastle University,
Middlesbrough central library, Grimsby town library, and Immingham library for their
help and assistance in providing me with the valuable references and sources needed for
the research. Additionally, I would like to thank the directors of postgraduate studies, the
former, Dr. James Procter and, the current, Dr. Anne Whitehead, for their advice and
assistance.

Last, but by no means least, I would like to thank three important groups of people for
their support, encouragement, and love. First and foremost, special thanks to my mother
whose prayer requests contributed a lot to my entire life and to the completion of this
project in particular. I owe a debt of gratitude to my brother Mr. Wajdi, my best friends
Mr. Nick Plummer and Pauline McLaughlin. I am lucky to have met Shelley Gibson here,
and I thank her for her love, support, and unyielding encouragement.

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Table of Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….i
Dedication……………………………………………………………………………….ii
Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………....iii-iv
Table of Contents…………..………………………………………………………...v-vii
List of Figures……………………………………………………………………….viii-xi
List of Tables………...……………………………………………………………...xii-xiii
List of Appendices......……………………………………………………………….....xiv
List of Abbreviations….………………………………………………………………...xv

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….1-2

Chapter One: Motivation, History and Current State of the 1821 Faustus
Translation Authorship Debate

1.1 Motivation…………………………………………………………………………...3-4
1.2 Bibliographic overview of translations of Faustus (Part I) in the early nineteenth-
century…………………………………………………………………………….....4-6
1.3 Existing attributions of Boosey’s 1821 Faustus to Coleridge…………………........6-7
1.3.1 The circumstantial historical argument………………………………………...8-11
1.3.2 The qualitative stylistic argument…………………………………………….11-15
1.3.3 The quantitative stylistic argument…………………………………………...15-18
1.4 Assessment…………………………………………………………………………...18
1.4.1 The present discussion’s own reaction………………………………………..18-24
1.4.2 Other reactions……………………………………………………………………24
1.4.2.1 The circumstantial historical argument…………………………………….....24-26
1.4.2.2 The qualitative stylistic argument………………………………………….....26-28
1.4.2.3 The quantitative stylistic argument…………………………………………...28-31
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Chapter Two: Research Question and Methodology

2.1 Research question…………………………………………………………………32
2.2 Methodology………………………………………………………………………32
2.2.1 The authorship identification problem………………………………………..32-33
2.2.2 Literature review………………………………………………………………33-34
2.2.2.1 Older works…………………………………………………………………34-36
2.2.2.2 Recent developments………………………………………………………..36-55
2.2.3 The methodology used in the present study……………………………………...56
2.2.3.1 Hypothesis testing…………………………………………………………...56-61
2.2.3.2 Vector space methods………………………………………………………..61-72
2.2.3.3 Data creation………………………………………………………………....72-99
2.2.3.4 Data analysis………………………………………………………………...99-129

Chapter Three: Analysis

3.1 Data creation: Function words frequency in Coleridge’s works……………….131-145
3.2 Coleridge’s usage of function words…………………………………………..145-156
3.3 Comparison of Coleridge’s usage of function words with contemporary
authors………………………………………………………….……………..........156-169
3.4 Where Faustus fits……………………………………………………………..169-180
3.5 Coleridge and the other translators of Faustus………………………………...180-198

Chapter Four: Interpretation……………………………………………………199-210

Chapter Five: Conclusions, Limitations, and Further Research

4.1 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………….211-215
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4.2 Limitations…………………………………………………………………………..215
4.3 Further research………………………………………………………………...215-216
Appendices………………………………………………………………………...217-260
Bibliography………………………………………………………………………261-304

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List of Figures

Figure (1.1) Word length measurements for Faustus 1821 and Remorse………………..16
Figure (1.2) Word length measurements for Faustus 1821 and Anster’s translation…....16
Figure (1.3) Word length measurements for Faustus 1821 and Gower’s translation…....17
Figure (2.1) An example of a vector …………………………………………………….61
Figure (2.2) Data items and variables in a data matrix m x n……………………………62
Figure (2.3) 2- and 3-dimensional vector space……………………...…………………..64
Figure (2.4) A vector in space……………………………………………………………64
Figure (2.5) Vector length………………………………………………………………..65
Figure (2.6) The angle between vectors………………………………………………….66
Figure (2.7) Vector distances…………………………………………………………….66
Figure (2.8) Figure………………………………………………………………………..67
Figure (2.9) Figure………………………………………………………………………..67
Figure (2.10) Figure……………………………………………………………………....68
Figure (2.11) Euclidean distance measure………………………………………………..69
Figure (2.12) Euclidean distance between V1 and V2…………………………………...70
Figure (2.13) Text-length based clustering………………………………………………78
Figure (2.14) Categories of manifold definition…………………………………………83
Figure (2.15) Effect of dimensionality increase on the size of a cube…………………...84
Figure (2.16) Data set of 1000 vectors in 3-dimensional space………………………….86
Figure (2.17) Plots of very large vectors in 2-dimensional space………………………..86
Figure (2.18) Five 2-dimensional vectors in space ……………………………………...88
Figure (2.19) Two 3-dimesnional vectors in space………………………………………88
Figure (2.20) Sparse data in the space……………………………………………………90
Figure (2.21) Concentrations of distance among vectors in space…………………….....91
Figure (2.22) Scatter plots of 2-dimensional data………………………………………100
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Figure (2.23) Two-dimensional data distribution with orthogonal basis……………….104
Figure (2.24) Alternative orthogonal basis ……………………………………………..105
Figure (2.25) Highly correlated two-dimensionality vectors with orthogonal basis……105
Figure (2.26) Alternative orthogonal basis for vectors…………………………………106
Figure (2.27) Three–dimensional data distribution with orthogonal basis……………..106
Figure (2.28) N x N covariance matrix of 6 phonetic segments for DMC……………...107
Figure (2.29) Linear and non-linear distance between points on the Earth’s surface…..115
Figure (2.30) A manifold embedded in metric space…………………………………...116
Figure (2.31) Neighborhoods in metric space…………………………………………..117
Figure (2.32) Scatter plot of randomly generated two-dimensional matrix M………….118
Figure (2.33) Graph interpretation of the neighborhood matrix………………………...120
Figure (2.34) Structure of a self-organizing map…………………………………….....122
Figure (2.35) SOM input lattice………………………………………………………...123
Figure (2.36) SOM lattice……………………………………………………………….123
Figure (2.37) An example of SOM trained on 20 vectors………………………………124
Figure (2.38) Hierarchical clustering tree………………………………………………126
Figure (2.39) Single linkage clustering…………………………………………………127
Figure (2.40) Complete linkage clustering……………………………………………...127
Figure (2.41) Average linkage clustering…………………………………………….....128
Figure (3.1) Variation in the lengths of the texts in the Coleridge’s Matrix D…………142
Figure (3.2) Ward’s analysis of Coleridge’s Matrix D………………………………….143
Figure (3.3) The distribution of function words in frequency matrix F1.………………144
Figure (3.4) Single linkage with cophenetic correlation………………………………..147
Figure (3.5) Complete linkage with cophenetic correlation…………………………….148
Figure (3.6) Average linkage with cophenetic correlation……………………………...149
Figure (3.7) Ward linkage with cophenetic correlation…………………………………150
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