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.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday April 20 2019, @08:46PM
Typical Roman understanding of Greek history and culture, Sulla! Homer composed the poems, and they were transmitted orally by rhapsodes. They were not written down until hundreds of years later, by not-Homer people.