TEXTUAL CRITICISM AND FORENSIC LINGUISTICS. THE AYALA-CERVANTES FILES

In this paper will be demonstrated that the edition of Pero Lopez de Ayala's Libro de la caza de las aves uploaded by Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes is not a derivative of Jose Gutierrez de la Vega's 1879 edition, as they claim, but a verbatim copy of Jose Fradejas Lebrero's version published in 1969. Moreover, the uploaded text was published by a commercial publisher and is being sold as a derivative of Gutierrez de la Vegas edition by a number of on-line resellers as printed book and as e-book. To prove it, all texts had been analysed with software used in forensic linguistics (automated collation, plagiarism checkers and concordancing software), but firstly it will explained what Forensic Linguistics is and later on will be discussed the possibility that the methods used in textual criticism are of value for Forensic Linguistics.