The Use Of Modal Expression Preference As A Marker Of Style And Attribution eBook

Can an authors preference for expressing modality be quantified and then used as a marker of attribution? This book explores the possibility of using the subjunctive mood as an indicator of style and a marker of authorship in Early Modern English texts. Using three works by the sixteenth-century biblical translator and polemicist, William Tyndale, Elizabeth Bell Canon establishes a predictable preference for certain types of modal expression. The theory of subjunctive use as a marker of attribution was then tested on the anonymous 1533 English translation of Erasmus Enchiridion Militis Christiani. Also included in this book is a modern English spelling version Tyndales The Parable of the Wicked Mammon.