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posted by takyon on Saturday April 20 2019, @04:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the anonymous-grendel dept.

Submitted via IRC for ErkleLives

The epic poem Beowulf is the most famous surviving work of Old English literature. For decades, scholars have hotly debated both when the poem was composed and whether it was the work of a single anonymous author ("the Beowulf poet"). Lord of the Rings' scribe J.R.R. Tolkien was among those who famously championed the single-author stance. Now researchers at Harvard University have conducted a statistical analysis and concluded that there was very likely just one author, further bolstering Tolkien's case. They published their findings in a recent paper [DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0570-1] [DX] in Nature Human Behavior.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/tolkien-was-right-scholars-conclude-beowulf-likely-the-work-of-single-author/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @09:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 20 2019, @09:07AM (#832488)

    Cluster elements should be ideally homogeneous, this is why the beowulf looks like the work of a single author. BUT ISN'T.