Of the same name

[undyingking]

You might have heard the joke that X's books were in fact not written by X, but by another man of the same name. I find it interesting because, while being entertainingly silly as a proposition, it also asks a fairly serious question about what we mean by authorship and how historical record works. But that's not what this post is about! – I'm curious to know, as your recollection serves you:

[Poll #1666257]

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Certainly true in the case of Homer. But what I think is interesting is that really we apply the same pattern of thought to more well-founded authors -- ie. in effect, "Shakespeare" is also for most practical intents and purposes a word defined in a similar way, even though we know it also refers to a specific person about whom we know some life details.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Somewhat, although I think not to the same extent precisely because there is personal knowledge there too. Whether Homer was a single person or not, we know absolutely nothing about him other than that he wrote those two works, which is the point of the joke. It doesn't work so well for Shakespeare: he's not a pre-historic figure.

For another example, there are several uncertain attributions to Leonardo da Vinci, and some traditional attributions now thought incorrect. We don't carry on calling those "Leonardos" on the basis that their author is Leonardo *by definition*.

Likewise, if it somehow conclusively turned out that there were three authors handling the Shakespeare franchise, one each for the tragedies, comedies and histories, I don't think we'd seriously carry on saying "Shakespeare wrote all those works, it's just Shakespeare was three people". We'd re-attribute the words to Arthur, Jake, and Lucy Shakespeare as appropriate, wouldn't we? If it was all written by Marlowe (granted much of it posthumously), we'd probably distinguish "William Shakespeare, the guy who hung around theatres in the 16th century", and "William Shakespeare, the pen name of Kit Marlowe's corpse". Many current uses of "Shakespeare" would then in fact refer to the latter, but I think we'd find the shift disruptive.

Conversely, if it turned out that "La Morte d'Arthur" was written by a nun from Exeter, I think we *would* then say, "ah, Sir Thomas Mallory was actually a nun from Exeter". Again, that's because we have essentially no facts to hang on Mallory other than that attribution. We've added to our previous knowledge about Mallory, we haven't simultaneously contradicted anything as "wrong" (we might stop calling her "Sir"). "Another poet of the same name as Homer" doesn't add anything or contradict anything.

Alan Smithee, now there's someone who challenges the very concept of authorship.