COMPUTATIONAL STYLOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF NARRATIVE PROSE BY JANEZ CIGLER AND CHRISTOPH VON SCHMID IN SLOVENIAN

Abstract

The first original Slovenian story, Sreča v nesreči (Fortune in Misfortune), was published by Janez Cigler in 1836. Slovenian literature specialists have ascribed a major influence on its creation to the works of the Bavarian writer Christoph von Schmid, not only in terms of its content, structure, concept, and narrative style, but also in following the spirit of the time and its regard for tradition. These researchers primarily focused on comparisons of content, but not on analyses of similarities in style. The Stylo package in the statistical software environment R for advanced stylistic analyses of text collections was therefore used to perform a stylometric analysis of Cigler’s works and Schmid’s translated works, as well as some translations of narrative prose from the period studied. Given certain limitations—such as the limited volume of texts, translated and original literature, and genre diversity—the analysis confirms Cigler’s original style rather than an imitation of Schmid, raising new questions regarding the authorship of certain works.