Aplicación de los fundamentos de la lingüística forense a los estudios de autoría literariala cárcel de Sevilla y los romances, dos entremeses atribuidos a Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Abstract

This doctoral thesis proposes applying the fundamental principles of forensic linguistics to literary authorship studies in order to make them more objective, more reliable and more precise. These fundamental principles are related to three essential guiding principles: (i) a theoretical one, based on the concept of idiolect as an individual and distinctive variant of each person; (ii) a methodological one, based on the forensic comparison of texts, which recommends combining qualitative and quantitative techniques and the study of variables that might affect different levels of language; and (iii) a conclusive one, based on the principle of probability, which recommends the expression of our conclusions in verbal opinion scales. From this approach, we carried out a study of the authorship of two of the ten entremeses (interludes) attributed to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (La cárcel de Sevilla and Los romances) to determine whether or not they are actually his and to what level of probability. The choice of these two works leads us in turn to reflect on the concept of authorship, the complex processes of creation, transmission and textual editing of the Spanish Golden Age theatre and the Cervantine fetishism in the 19th century that gave rise to the massive attribution of works to Cervantes.