Abstract
This chapter1 introduces computer-aided, statistical methods for detecting influence. These approaches, which we call “lexomics,” were originally developed for the analysis of biological relationships, but our research group at Wheaton College has modified them for the analysis of literary texts.2 Lexomic methods are successful at identifying influence because the similarity between memes and genes is not just a powerful and useful metaphor but also a recognition of the identity of the fundamental underlying processes of the differential reproduction of replicating entities. It has therefore been possible to take techniques designed for the analysis of genes and apply them to the analysis of memes. Using these methods, as well as traditional philological approaches to cultural analysis, I will in this chapter show the specific ways particular literary texts have evolved and been influenced and how memes remain stable in some ways and change in others as they cross particular boundaries from one culture or language to another. Lexomic methods allow us to identify memes, to see their influence on other memes, and to find their traces where they otherwise might not be noticed. The goal of this chapter is not only to present the methods and show that they work but also to explain what their working illustrates about cultural evolution. It turns out that the meme-based theory of culture is the best available explanation for the phenomena uncovered by lexomic methods and that lexomic methods give us greater insight into the evolution of meme-plexes.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Michael Lapidge, “Schools, Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Latin Literature 900–1066 (London: Hambledon Press, 1993), 1–48;
Michael Lapidge, “The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature,” Anglo-Latin Literature 900–1066, (London: Hambledon Press, 1993), 105–49.
Mechthild Gretsch, The Intellectual Foundations of the English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 332–83.
Michael D. C. Drout, How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 261 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2006). 188–92.
Dennett, Daniel C., Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
Michael D. C. Drout, Michael J. Kahn, Mark D. LeBlanc, and Christina Nelson. “Of Dendrogrammatology: Lexomic Methods for Analyzing the Relationships Among Old English Poems,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 110 (2011): 301–36;
Sarah Downey, Michael D. C. Drout, Michael J. Kahn, and Mark LeBlanc, “‘Books Tell Us’: Lexomic and Traditional Evidence for the Sources of Guthlac A, ” Modern Philology 110 (2012): 1–29.
J. F. Burrows, “Questions of Authorship: Attribution and Beyond,” Computers and the Humanities 37 (2003): 5–32.
John F. Burrows, “The Englishing of Juvenal: Computational Stylistics and Translated Texts,” Style 36, no. 4 (2002): 677.
David L. Hoover, “Testing Burrows’s Delta,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 19, no. 4 (2004): 453–75.
K. Mardia, J. Kent, and J. Bibby, Multivariate Analysis (Academic Press: London, 1980).
R Development Core Team, R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2009), http://www.R-project.org.
Willi Hennig, Phylogenetic Systematics, trans. D. Dwight Davis and Rainer Zangerl (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966).
John Miles Foley, Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf and the Serbo-Croation Return Song (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 44–50.
Fr. Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg 3rd ed. (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1950), 2;
Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954 [1898]), 1088.
Angus Cameron and Roberta Frank, A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 121–2.
Arnold Schröer, ed., Die Angelsächsischen Prosabearbeitungen der Benediktinerregel Bibliothek der angelsächsischenProsa (Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft, 1964 [1885]).
George Philip Krapp, ed., The Junius Manuscript, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931).
R. T. Farrell, ed., Daniel and Azarias (London: Methuen, 1974).
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957;
Philip Krapp and Eliot Van Kirk Dobbie, eds., The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).
Paul G. Remley, “ Daniel, the Three Youths Fragment and the Transmission of Old English Verse,” Anglo-Saxon England 31 (2002): 81–140.
Bernard Muir, ed., The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry: An Edition of Exeter Dean and Chapter MS 3501 2nd ed., vol. 1. (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2000), 157.
Kenneth Sisam, “Notes on Old English Poetry,” RES 22 (1946–7): 257–68.
Eduard Sievers, Der Heliand und die angelsächsische Genesis (Halle: Lippert, 1875), 6–17.
Karl Zangemeister and Wilhelm Braune, Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Bibeldichtung aus der Bibliotheca Palatina (Heidelberg: Verlad von G. Koester, 1894).
William D. Conybeare, ed., Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, (New York: Haskell House, 1964 [1826), 188;
R. D. Fulk, A History of Old English Meter, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 49.
John Mitchell Kemble. “On Anglo-Saxon Runes,” Archaeologia 28 (1840): 327–72.
R. D. Fulk, “Cynewulf : Canon, Dialect, Date,” in The Cynewulf Reader, ed. Robert Bjork (New York: Routledge, 2001), 3–21 at 5.
Albert S. Cook, The Christ of Cynewulf (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1900), 210–11.
Germain Morin, Sancti Caesarii Episcopi Arelatensis Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (Bruges: Maretioli, 1937–42), vol. I, 242–3.
Edward B. Irving, “Latin Prose Sources for Old English Verse,”Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 588–95.
Frederick M. Biggs, The Sources of Christ III: A Revision of Cook’s Notes. Old English Newsletter Subsidia 12 (Binghamton: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1986), 30–31.
Franz Dietrich, “Cynevulfs Christ.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsches Literatur 9 (1853): 193–214.
Richard Trask. “The Last Judgment of the Exeter Book: A Critical Edition.” PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, 1972.
Based on Figure 2 of Downey, et al., “Books Tell Us,” 1–29 at 11.
Jane Roberts, ed., The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
Laurence K. Shook, “The Burial Mound in Guthlac A, Modern Philology 58 (1960): 1–10;
Jane Roberts, “An Inventory of Early Guthlac Materials,” Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970): 193–233.
Bertram Colgrave, Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac: Introduction, Text, Translation and Notes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 26–44.
Jane Roberts, “An Inventory of Early Guthlac Materials,” Medieval Studies 32 (1970): 193–233.
James L. Rosier, “Death and Transfiguration: Guthlac B, ” in Philological Essays in Honor of Herbert Dean Merritt, ed. James L. Rosier (Paris: Mouton, 1970), 82–92;
Thomas D. Hill, “The Typology of the Week and the Numerical Structure of the Old English Guthlac B, ” Mediaeval Studies 37 (1975): 531–6;
Daniel G. Calder, “Guthlac A and Guthlac B: Some Discriminations,” in Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation for John C. McGalliard, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson, Dolores Warwick Frese, and John C. Gerber (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 65–80.
Fredrick M. Biggs, “Unities in the Old English Guthlac B, ” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 89 (1990): 155–65.
Patrick W. Conner, “Source Studies, the Old English Guthlac A and the English Benedictine Reformation,” Revue Bénédictine 103 (1993): 380–413;
Christopher A. Jones, “Envisioning the Cenobium in the Old English Guthlac A, ” Mediaeval Studies 57 (1995): 259–91;
Sarah Downey, “Too Much of Too Little: Guthlac and the Temptation of Excessive Fasting,” Traditio 63 (2008): 89–127;
G. H. Gerould, “The Old English Poems on St. Guthlac and their Latin Source,” MLN 32 (1917): 77–89;
Andy Orchard, “Both Style and Substance: The Case for Cynewulf” in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. Catherine E. Karkov and George Hardin Brown (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 271–305 at 294–7.
Jane Roberts, “The Old English Prose Translation of Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci, ” in Studies in Earlier Old English Prose, ed. Paul Szarmach (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 363–79.
Johannes Bollandus et al., “Acta acutore anonymo ex xi veteribus MSS,” Acta sanctorum Februarius II, Dies 16, 87579, http://acta.chadwyck.co.uk/;
Claes Schaar, Critical Studies in the Cynewulf Group (New York: Haskell House, 1967), 27–31.
Margaret Bridges, “Exordial Tradition and Poetic Individuality in Five OE Hagiographical Poems,” English Studies 60 (1979): 361–79, at 375, discusses Guthlac B ’s prologue and its reference to “bec” as an authenticating formula.
Thomas N. Hall, “A Gregorian Model for Eve’s Biter Drync in Guthlac B, ” The Review of English Studies n.s. 44, no. 174 (1993): 157–75, includes a detailed summary of various sources that have been proposed.
Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenberry, The Three Little Wolves and the Big, Bad Pig (New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 1997).
Daniel Donoghue, Style in Old English Poetry: The Test of the Auxiliary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 107–16.
Sandra J. Harmatiuk, “A Statistical Approach to Some Aspects of the Style in the Signed Poems of Cynewulf,” PhD, University of Notre Dame, 1975, 162–71.
Franz Charitius, “Über die angelsächsischen Gedichte vom. hl. Guthlac,” Anglia 2 (1879): 265–308;
Matthias Cremer, Metrische und sprachliche Untersuchung der altenglischen Gedichte Andreas, Gu ð lac, Phoenix (Elene, Juliana, Crist). Ein Beitrag zur Cynewulffrage (Bonn: Carl Georgi, 1888);
Frank J. Mather, “The Cynewulf Question from a Metrical Point ofView,” Modern Language Notes 7 (1892): 193–213;
Moritz Trautmann, Kynewulf der Bischof und Dichter, vol. 1., Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik (Bonn: P. Hansteins Verlag, 1898), 43–70.
Kenneth Sisam, “Dialect Origins of the Earlier Old English Verse” Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 119–39.
Roy Liuzza, “The Old English Christ and Guthlac Texts, Manuscripts and Critics,” Review of English Studies 41 (1990): 1–11.
John Burrows, “Questions of Authorship: Attribution and Beyond,” Computers and the Humanities 37 (2003): 5–32.
Roy M. Liuzza, “The Old English Christ and Guthlac Texts, Manuscript and Critics,” Review of English Studies 41 (1990): 1–11.
Patrick W. Conner, Anglo-Saxon Exeter: A Tenth-Century Cultural History (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1993), 162–4.
Jesse M. Gellrich, The Idea of the Book in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).
Max Rieger, “Über Cynevulf,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 1 (1869): 325.
Thomas N. Hall, “A Gregorian Model for Eve’s Biter Drync in Guthlac B, ” The Review of English Studies n.s. 44, no. 174 (1993): 157–75, includes a detailed summary of various sources that have been proposed.
Margaret Bridges, “Exordial Tradition and Poetic Individuality in Five OE Hagiographical Poems,” English Studies 60 (1979): 361–79, at 375.
Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton University Press, 1983).
Walter Hofstetter, Winchester und der spätaltenglische Sprachgebrauch (Munich: W. Fink, 1987), 17–18.
Copyright information
© 2013 Michael D. C. Drout
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Drout, M.D.C. (2013). Influence and Its Detection with Lexomic Analysis. In: Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137324603_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137324603_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45954-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-32460-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)