Abstract

The paternity of the ‘Epistola a Cangrande’ is probably the most salient open problem in Dante’s studies, such that any proposed solution must be thoroughly examined. In this work, the articles from Corbara et alii, ‘L’ ‘Epistola a Cangrande’ al vaglio della ‘Computational Authorship Verification’’ and ‘The ‘Epistle to Cangrande’ Through the Lens of Computational Authorship Verification’, are analyzed and commented using arguments from the theoretical framework of Machine Learning (ML) and Authorship Verification (AV) and its literature. The reliability of any AV model is dependent on its training texts and the features chosen to characterize them, and by presenting limitations of the used models, which showcase some inherent subjectivities of ML, we conclude that the problem of the Epistola’s paternity remains thus open.