Corneille in the shadow of Molière

Où trouvera-ton un poète qui ait possédé à la fois tant de grands talents (…) capable néanmoins de s'abaisser, quand il le veut, et de descendre jusqu'aux plus simples naïvetés du comique, où il est encore inimitable. In December 2001, the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics published an article by Cyril Labbé and me (see bibliographical references at the end of this note, before appendixes). This article presented a new method for authorship attribution and gave the example of the main Molière plays which Pierre Corneille probably wrote (lists of these plays in appendix I, II and VI). An essay, intended for the general French public, was published in June 2003 : Corneille dans l'ombre de Molière (Corneille in the shadow of Molière). This essay tells the story of this research and tries to answer the main questions. My presentation briefly summaries the method and the conclusions on Corneille-Molière. Of course, from these results have arisen a large number of questions and objections. This presentation discusses the following points: what is the signification of the results? How was this method validated? What do these results prove?