FactGrid:Prose fiction data model

work in progress

All properties for publications

• all FactGrid properties for publications (Q77484)

• bibliographical core data (Q100931)
• contexts of other publications (genre, stemma etc.) (Q100932)
• language and content (Q77485)
• financial details on an edition (Q100933)
• fiction and dubious histories (Q221312)

Basic requirements

1. Label — give in your language and in English, 250 characters, use condensed transcript of the title page, end with Imprint (Place: Publisher, Year).
2. Description/ Beschreibung — should exist you language and in English: 250 to individualise you item
3. Alias — use this for short cuts like "Arsinoe"
4. instance of (P2) — printed publication Item:Q20
5. wider field of genres (P122) — prose fiction Item:Q195135

Locating the title and linking digital editions

1. holding institution
2. Google Books ID (525) — to link directly to a Google Books Digitisation
3. MDZ ID (526) — to link BSB (Bavarian State Library) digitisations on the MDZ-identifier
4. exlibris (413) — state whose Exlibris is found in a book
5. listed in (124) — to refer to bibliographies and catalogues that noted the object (especially useful on lost items)
6. online transcript (69) — state the URL of an online transcript of a document

Describing the Object

Title page

1. title page transcript (P5) — see Gerhard Dünhaupt, use | for line break, and [rule], [vignette], [publisher's signet], [line of typographical ornaments] for common graphical elements
2. type of work (standardised) (121) — Use this property to organise works according to types of production
3. type of work (as stated) (P4) — to state a self-classification in the respective language
4. prospective audience (573) — to note specific audiences addressed
5. type of title focus (572) — For example, a person, an event, a moral can be in the foreground. If there is more than one information, add successively under P499 qualifiers

Imprint information

1. printed by (207) — to name the company that printed a publication
2. published by (206) — the company or person publishing the item
3. published in (64) — refers to publication ([[Property:P
4. publisher as misleadingly stated (544) — e.g. Pierre Marteau, Cologne

The early modern production of fiction (and dubious histories) was not only discredited by most contemporary scholars as baseless and scandalous if not dangerous with its power to delude and to incite lechery. It was also statistically marginal and published often with a deliberate irresponsibility designed to deserve the criticism. The following properties and statements give the basic options:

The shrouding of responsibilities is symptomatic of the low prestige — this was not "literature", the realm of academic learning, with its high prestige. It is, at the same moment a result of the irresponsibility that made it attractive to enter this particular market: fictional histories spread fashions to the delight of the young elites and it opened branches of irresponsible interaction in the centre of the belles lettres, the realm where history gained an increasing public attention outside the limitations of of academic learning.

1. Quality of author identification Property:P561
2. Quality of place identification Property:P562
3. Quality of publisher identification Property:P564
4. Quality of date information Property:P563

the following Items are prepared for the optional statements

1. "transparently stated" Item:Q221316
2. "obviously misleading statement" — Item:Q221317
3. "misleading but plausible statement" — Item:Q221318
4. "without statement" — Item:Q221319
5. "states where sold, instead of specifying the place of production" — Item:Q221320
6. "publisher hides behind partners" — Item:Q221321

Preface

1. preface by (179) — to state the author of the preface to a publication

Dedication

1. publishes (254) — state documents published in a book
2. publishing interval (292) — the publishing interval of a periodical
3. quality of author identification (561) — use on documents and publications to state the reliability or apparent deficits of the statements given on the object
4. quality of date information (563) — use on documents and publications to state the reliability or apparent deficits of the statements given on the object
5. quality of place identification (562) — use on documents and publications to state the reliability or apparent deficits of the statements given on the object
6. quality of publisher identification (564) — use on documents and publications to state the reliability or apparent deficits of the statements given on the object
7. quoting (306) — to state text(s) that are quoted by the object in question
8. reception promises (literal) (570) — to state the literal promises of why one should read the text, see the play
9. reception promises (standardised) (571) — in addition to P570 a statement of language equivalents
10. reviewing (308) — to list reviews in a journal etc.
11. self-statement on historicity / fictionality (565) — use especially on novels and dubious histories of the early modern period to note the integration into the fields of histories and romances
12. sets ordered (542) — to state the number of copies ordered in a subscription
13. subscribers (275) — to state people who subscribed e.g. on a book publication (complete lists should be rather generated and linked)
14. sujet (576) — to classify the plot of works of art and fictional texts
15. text opening, transcript (70) — to quote the opening of a text (that has no title)
16. things mentioned (256) — use widely for everything mentioned except people
17. topic (243) — the central object of a work
18. type of publication (144) — classification in a typology: whether a publication is a monograph, periodical, article in a periodical etc.

Publishing history

1. preceding in stemma (233) — use conservatively to connect to preceding in genealogy or development
2. answer on (65) — to state the text that triggered this reply
3. answered with (205) — the reply that answers the present item
4. begin of composition (39) — use this property if a document has been written over a longer period of time
5. co-author (511) — an author who contributed to a work
6. collation (543) — to state the individual parts of a book from title page and preface to index
7. commissioned by (273) — for the person or institution who commissioned a work
8. contribution (553) — to state specific contributions (e.g. introduction) to a compound work
9. contributor (410) — to name those who contributed to a work

date as stated (96) — Qualifier for P106 and P222

1. date of artefact (536) — e.g. to state the date of the manuscript copy (different from the date that may be given in the text)
2. date of composition (412) — use if a text for instance was composed far earlier than the copy extant
3. date of disputation (392) — Date in the public dissertation
4. date of publication according to imprint (222) — The standard date as taken from a title page. Use P96 if you know the exact day, week, or month of the publication
5. dedicatee (391) — the person who is being offered the dedication# events mentioned (532) — to refer to Items that have a P2-event statement
6. formed a set with (409) — to name objects that originally belonged together
7. installment of (441) — to name for instance the periodical of which this is an individual number

Content

1. protagonists who also appear in other works (567) — to name people who appear in different works (novels, plays, paintings)
2. quality / occupation of the central protagonists (569) — property especially for novels and plays
3. Prospective audience P573 — to state who is specifically addressed as readership
4. Reception promises (literal) (P570) — to mark the advertised reading gratification
5. Reception promises (standardised) (P571) — to mark the advertised reading gratification with a statement that will be valid in all the languages used on FactGrid
6. Dedicatee (P391) — to name the person(s) addressed in the dedication
7. Reported event (P19) — to name events portrayed in the text
8. 'events mentioned' (532) — to refer to Items that have a P2-event statement
9. Begin of events reported (P545) — to date the beginning of a historical narrative
10. End of events reported (P46) — to date the end of a historical narrative
11. places of action (566) — property to be used especially on novels and plays
12. Protagonists who also appear in other works (P567) — to name protagonists who also appear in other works of art and fiction
13. Persons mentioned (P33) — to state other persons mentioned in a text, for instance rivaling authors
14. Quality / occupation of the central protagonists (P569) — to state the social status of the protagonists
15. genre (568) — to note a wider tradition of works in which similar sujets are treated with the same techniques
16. Sujet (P576) — to state common stories of fictional texts
17. Texts mentioned (P116) — to state open references to other texts
18. inter-textual allusions (574) — to state implicit references to other texts; use P116 for other texts that are actually mentioned
19. digest in English (75) — use this to give a short digest of the text in English
20. digest in German (72) — use this to give a short digest of the text in German

Fictions as part of the historical production

The integration into the historical, apparent in practically all the contemporary book catalogues, came in two opposing directions — to the left and to the right of the following spectrum. Authors and publishers could either pretend to offer nothing but "romantic fictions", "feigned histories" — with publications that smelled of a concealed deeper truth. Keys were often published separately to trigger the scandalous exposures. The alternative came with titles that defended the historicity of the strangely unbelievable account. Both options depended on a centre of fictional titles that would be be read as such. Here the authors observed a tension between "high", "heroic" performances and "low" "satirical" sujets (not to be confused with the tensions between elegant books of the belles lettres and the cheap production of popular chap books).

A central production existed in the heart of this spectrum: The production of modern "novels" that would avoid the stereotypes of the heroic and the satirical genres. It is this the centre that propagated the term "novel" in English with its alternative of "intrigues" rather than "adventures":

items to be used on P565		Item:Q221324 Heroical Romances: Fénelon's Telemach (1699)
Q221322 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of public affairs: Manley's New Atalantis (1709)	Q221323 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of private affairs: Menantes' Satyrischer Roman (1706)	Q221325 Classics of the novel from the Arabian Nights to M. de La Fayette's Princesse de Clèves (1678)	Q221327 Sold as true private history, risking to be read as romantic invention: Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719)	Q221323 Sold as true public history, risking to be read as romantic invention: La Guerre d'Espagne (1707)
		Q221326 Satirical Romances: Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605)

Exchange and Development

Towards the modern market of "literary" works to be placed against "low" popular fiction

The options did not really disappear; they live on in the spheres of genre-driven "popular fictions" with their broad range from sex and pornography to crime, fantasy and espionage in highest political spheres. The irresponsibility of the entire sphere disappeared, however, in the light of the critical appraisal which secondary discourses began to offer to a new "high" field of works of new "literary merits". The critical discourses whicch pushed fiction, plays and poetry into the sphere of serious "literature" focused on a new tension between reality and art and demanded a singular and provocative perspective which only true artists could offer. The ensuing debates made it profitable for fiction to be published as fiction — with a short title and the words "a novel", that would automatically call for a critical appraisal of authorial effort to transform reality into a work of art — so the fundamental descandalisation. The new scandal would be one within the sphere of "great literary works" and "finest works of art", so the strategic move that ended the previous debates of fiction in the middle of the historical production. "National literatures" emerged to form national debates; a "low" and "trivial" production would continue the success of the early modern market and serve as the backdrop against which true literature would have to show its merits.

This is more a development to be shown in a wider context of secondary debates discovering early modern prose fiction as an interesting object to discuss — between the 1750s and the 1850s.

Stating Research

1. autopsy by (411) — to state those who saw a document or object