Stylometry Studies and the Controversial Origin of the German Hymnographic Tradition
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2026-1-93-103Keywords:
Burrows’s Delta; German Catholic hymnography; history of the genre; origin of the German hymnographic tradition; historical liturgical studies; history of German literature.Abstract
In contemporary literary studies, a perplexing scholarly controversy regarding German Catholic hymnals and their development revolves around the descriptive philology paradigm, focusing on the directly observable external characteristics of a literary text, as opposed to a more profound insight into intrinsic literary properties of texts. The paper is a pioneering attempt at applying stylometric tools, successfully utilized for authorship identification, to reconstruct the historical development of a literary genre. Stylometry is shown as a valid tool for building an adequate development model for the German hymnographic tradition. The purpose of the study is to test the possibilities of Burrows’s Delta in modeling the historical development of the liturgical-literary genre of the German Catholic hymn. This approach represents a specific case of stylometry. Unlike conventional stylometry studies, assessing similarities between texts of known and anonymous authorship to unmask or link pseudonyms to an author’s identity, the present paper analyzes the similarity rates across text collections belonging to particular historical-cultural periods. The analyzed text collections are taken from the main parts (Germ. Stammteil) of two editions of Gotteslob (GL 1975; GL 2013) – a Catholic hymnal common for all German-speaking cultures (except Switzerland). The total sampled database includes 41,596 words. The stylo R package was utilized to analyze the frequency lists comprising the top 100, 200, and 300 most frequent words per each text collection perceived as representing a particular historical-cultural period and belonging to the living hymnographic tradition. The study shows that the genre of German hymns developed not according to a linear sequential development pattern, but followed a specific development trajectory of a ‘reinvented tradition’. The Gotteslob of the first generation (GL 1975) largely relies on the Gründerzeit traditions, rooted in the Reformation era and exhibiting a retrospective reference to Baroque Renaissance as a hallmark of the Adenauer’s era of “new Gründerzeit.” In contrast, the second-generation Gotteslob (GL 2013) rejected the ‘new Gründerzeit’ trend, with the editorial board favoring texts that reflected the sentiments typical for the liturgical movement of the first half of the 20th century.References
Список источников
Gotteslob: Katholisches Gebet- und Gesangbuch. Ausgabe für das Bistum Trier. Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 1975. 1054 S.
Gotteslob: Katholisches Gebet- und Gesangbuch. Ausgabe für das Bistum Trier. Stuttgart: Katholische Bibelanstalt; Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 2014. 1296 S.
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