FactGrid:Prose fiction data model

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)

Some notes on our specific properties for prose fiction and dubious histories

A number of properties are already used for straight texts:

Early modern titles are, however, with their extended titles, prefaces and dedications ofter often quite explicit on a number of particular aspects. Use here:

1. Type of title focus (P572) — to state whether a title is selling a particular person's story or something quite different
2. Type of work (as stated) (P4) — to state a self-classification in the respective language
3. Type of work (standardised) (P121) — to state the self-classification in a statement for all languages on FactGrid
4. Prospective audience P573 — to state who is specifically addressed as readership
5. Reception promises (literal) (P570) — to mark the advertised reading gratification
6. Reception promises (standardised) (P571) — to mark the advertised reading gratification with a statement that will be valid in all the languages used on FactGrid
7. Dedicatee (P391) — to name the person(s) addressed in the dedication
8. Reported event (P19) — to name events portrayed in the text
9. Begin of events reported (P545) — to date the beginning of a historical narrative
10. End of events reported (46) — to date the end of a historical narrative
11. Protagonists who also appear in other works (P567) — to name protagonists who also appear in other works of art and fiction
12. Persons mentioned (P33) — to state other persons mentioned in a text, for instance rivaling authors
13. Quality / occupation of the central protagonists (P569) — to state the social status of the protagonists
14. Genre (P568) — to state typical worlds of fictional texts
15. Sujet (P576) — to state common stories of fictional texts
16. Texts mentioned (116) — to state open references to other texts
17. Inter-textual allusions (P574) — to state implicit references to other texts

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:

Quality of author identification Property:P561 Quality of place identification — Property:P562 Quality of publisher identification — Property:P564 Quality of date information — Property:P563

the following Items are prepared for the optional statements "transparently stated" — Item:Q221316 "obviously misleading statement" — Item:Q221317 "misleading but plausible statement" — Item:Q221318 "without statement" — Item:Q221319 "states where sold, instead of specifying the place of production" — Item:Q221320 "publisher hides behind partners" — Item:Q221321

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.

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)

Developments towards the modern market

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.