The Authorship of the Works of Chrétien de Troyes A Stylometric Examination

Numerous controversies have emerged about the exact delimitations of the works written by the hand of Chrétien de Troyes, the founder of French roman and introductor of the theme of the Holy Grail in medieval literature. In this paper, we collect a corpus made of previous digital editions and of texts OCRed and post-corrected by ourselves, to analyse it through authorship attribution techniques. Our results seem to broadly confirm expected results, such as the way Chrétien's Lancelot was finished by Godefroy de Laigny. But our analyses also add new insights. Our rolling SVM suggest the possibility that the poorly esteemed and very disputed Guillaume d'Angleterre would have been written by multiple authors, indicating a possible completion of passages previously written by Chrétien. They also highlight the fact that Perceval's ending could have been completed the same way the Lancelot was, by someone who is not Chrétien. Further analyses will be needed to confirm these new findings.

Long paper presented at DH Benelux 2024, KU Leuven, June 6th, 2024 by Florian Cafiero and Jean-Baptiste Camps. Session chaired by Federico Pianzola.