Challenging an Authorial Attribution: Vocabulary and Emotion in a Translation of Goethe's Faust Attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Abstract

This article disputes the stylometric attribution of an anonymous English 1821 translation of Goethe's German verse drama Faust to the poet an critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The translation was compared to four known Coleridgean dramas, two of which were translations from German. Evidence challenging Coleridge's authorship came from words used proportionally more often by Coleridge, words used proportionally more often by the unknown translator, differential employment of parallel word forms ("O" and "hath" for Coleridge, "oh" and "has" for the translator), and differences in the undertones of the two vocabularies, as measured by the Dictionary of Affect in Language (Coleridge's undertones were less pleasant and more abstract). Some problems with the stylometry of the challenged attribution to Coleridge are noted.