From n-grams to n-sets: A Fuzzy-Logic-Based Approach to Shakespearian Authorship Attribution.

This thesis surveys the principles of Fuzzy Logic as they have been applied in the last three decades in the micro-electronic field and, in the context of resolving problems of authorship verification and attribution shows how these principles can assist with the detection of stylistic similarities or dissimilarities of an anonymous, disputed play to an author’s general or patterns-based known style. The main stylistic markers are the counts of semantic sets of 100 individual words-tokens and an index of counts of these words’ frequencies (a cosine index), as found in the first extract of approximately 10,000 words of each of 27 well attributed Shakespearian plays. Based on these markers, their geometrical representation, fuzzy modelling and on thee ground of Set Theory and Boolean Algebra, in the core part of this thesis three Mamdani (Type-1) genre-based Fuzzy Expert Systems were built for the detection of degrees (measured on a scale from 0 to 1) of Shakespearianness of disputed and, probably, co-authored plays of the early modern English period. Each of these three expert systems is composed of seven input and two output variables that are associated through a set of approximately 30 to 40 rules. There is a detailed description of the properties of the three expert systems’ inference mechanisms and the various experimentation phases. There is also an indicative graphical analysis of the phases of the experimentation and a thorough explanation of terms, such as partial truths membership, approximate reasoning and output centroids on an X-axis of a two-dimensional space. Throughout the thesis there is an extensive demonstration of various Fuzzy Logic techniques, including Sugeno-ANFIS (adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system), with which the style of Shakespeare can be modelled in order to compare it with well attributed plays of other authors or plays that are not included in the strict Shakespearian canon of the selected 27 well-attributed, sole authored plays. In addition, other relevant issues of stylometric concern are discussed, such as the investigation and classification of known ‘problem’ and disputed plays through holistic classifiers (irrespective of genre). The results of the experimentation advocate the use of this novel, automated and computer simulation-based method of classification in the stylometric field for various purposes. In fact, the three models have succeeded in detecting the low Shakespearianness of non Shakespearian plays and the results they provided for anonymous, disputed plays are in conformance with the general evidence of historical scholarship. Therefore, the original contribution of this thesis is to define fully functional automated fuzzy classifiers of Shakespearianness. The result of this discovery is that we now know that the principles of fuzzy modelling can be applied for the creation of Fuzzy Expert Stylistic Classifiers and the concomitant detection of degrees of similarity of a play under scrutiny with the general or patterns-based known style of a specific author (in our case, Shakespeare). Furthermore, this thesis shows that, given certain premises, counts of words’ frequencies and counts of semantic sets of words can be employed satisfactorily for stylistic discrimination

Contemporary Studies Network roundtable: responding to Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Generation Anthropocene’

In April 2016, The Guardian published ‘Generation Anthropocene: How humans have altered the planet forever’ by the celebrated academic and nature writer Robert Macfarlane. Reflecting on the article’s importance as a critical experiment and, perhaps, a vital form of public engagement, Contemporary Studies Network (CSN) asked six of its members, working across very different areas of literary and cultural studies, to respond to and extend Macfarlane’s article, mapping the different ways in which literary scholars might approach the age of the Anthropocene. Conducted via email, this roundtable conversation asks to what extent the Anthropocene marks a new era in literary criticism, how exactly it extends pre-existing strands of ecocriticism and trauma studies, and what the global scope of the term might be beyond the confines of the Western literary canon. Discussion ranges from issues of temporality to genre and form and it also addresses Macfarlane’s rhetoric, his call to arms for those working in the humanities, for a more comprehensive investigation in to the roles of literature and art in responding to and representing what may become a new epoch

The anonymous 1821 translation of Goethe's Faust :a cluster analytic approach

PhD ThesisThis 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

Vidéopoésie

Canadian digital artist and videopoet Valerie LeBlanc and Canadian poet, musician, and videopoet ******** Daniel H. Dugas have been working together since 1990. Daniel H. Dugas was born in Montréal, QC. Poet, videographer, essayist and musician, Dugas has exhibited and participated in exhibitions, festivals and literary events in Canada and internationally. His ninth book of poetry: L’esprit du temps/The Spirit of the Time won the 2016 Antonine-Maillet-Acadie Vie award and the 2018 Éloizes: Artiste de l’année en littérature. daniel.basicbruegel.com | Videos distributed through: vtape.org *********** Pluridisciplinary artist and writer, Valerie LeBlanc was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has worked and presented throughout Canada and internationally. LeBlanc’s first video: Homecoming was collected and screened by the National Gallery of Canada. She is the creator of the MediaPackBoard (MPB), a portable screening / performance device. valerie.basicbruegel.com | Videos distributed through: vtape.org ********** Their specific uniqueness within the videopoetry world also lies in the musicality of speaking two languages. LeBlanc’s first language is English and her second French; and Dugas’ is French with English second. (Sarah Tremlett)This project is supported by the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University and the New Brunswick Arts Board. / Ce projet est soutenu par le Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts à Brock University et par le Conseil des arts du Nouveau-Brunswick

Mapping extremist forums using text mining

Political opinions far from what is considered normal, a distorted view of reality, and hatred to certain other groups are spread amongst political extremists like Islamists and White Supremacists. Demonstrations and violence performed by some members of these groups are well-known from mass media and get a lot of attention. The Islamists and right-extremists exploit this benefit to spread their message to ordinary people. In online forums, young, curious people can read detailed information (or propaganda) from extremists. Which words do extremists then use to convince each other in addition to other curious readers that what they stand for is right? The goal of this thesis is to first find algorithms or techniques for how to discover characteristic vocabulary in online extremist forums and words that frequently are used in the same forum message. Then we analyse the results to find patterns of what is typical vocabulary in the different forums. Mapping the extremists’ habits of vocabulary usage can help us know better how extremists write in online extremist forums, and possibly also help us recognize them when they write on some other websites. In this thesis, we find frequent and characteristic words by means of Global Term Frequency (GTF) and pairs of co-occurring words by means of odds ratio in different extremist forums. We compare normalized GTF (NGTF) of words in two forums to find out where they are used most. Words used in only one of two forums are found as well. We find the GTFs for words written by five of the ten most active authors in each forum, and we find words that one author writes, while the other of ten most active authors does not write. From results we see that Islamists write most about religion, but also some politics. Some popular words are “allah”, “prophet”, “fasting”, and “hajj”. The right-extreme websites Stormfront and Vigrid discuss politics and argument for their own ideology and against the mainstream politics. Frequent words in Stormfront are “white”, “jews”, and “race”, in the Norwegian Vigrid website “jødene”, “tyskland”, and “krigen”. In the German right-extreme website Deutsche Stimme, “npd”, “Deutschland”, “partei”, and “volk” are frequent words. Both Islamists and right-extremists are preoccupied by family values. Our results are useful for discovering topics that extremists write about in their online forums, topics that other people do not write about at all or write about with a different point of view