Describe genre formats relative to the digital humanities : number of pages in the anticipation narrative (1880-1940)
Yoan Vérilhac
Construction of a database such as “Anticipation” allows for a description of genre from numerous angles, notably that of narrative length : a distinction is made between novels and short stories, and the classified texts, from their first versions to their latest reprints, are associated with number of pages. Can we, in consequence, envisage describing anticipation narrative formats using the digital humanities ? This approach inspires a reflection method concerning the notion of “format” which, when naturally applied to serial culture to designate the commercial, fragmentable, and recomposable dimension of the works, proves far more complex than one might first expect.
Anticipation in images : illustration, editorial strategies and genericity
Delphine Gleizes
The literature of anticipation is associated most of the time with the teeming creativity of a very visual imagination. Additionally, these images have a concrete presence insofar as they parallel the genre’s deployment starting in the nineteenth century, to judge by the famous Hetzel bindings or the illustrations in popular science writings. Illustration is, in fact, an integral part of the iconotextual arrangement serving the media construction of the genre. Recourse to “Anticipation” database statistics via a quantitative approach must enable support for this hypothesis. Accordingly, the aim of this article is twofold : 1) highlight, from a methodological perspective, how “Anticipation” database statistics can be used in terms of the illustration of the editions considered and 2) contribute to a better knowledge of the relationships of the literature of anticipation to the illustrated image. By proposing a fairly complete table of the uses of illustration, the database allows us to identify the role played by the image in editorial strategies from 1860 to the present. In so doing, the data also provide elements to better understand the reception mechanisms of the literature of anticipation while identifying and differentiating targeted readerships.
Customized uses of the digital humanities : the representation of women, between invisibilization and visualizations
Christèle Couleau
The ANR Anticipation database and its advanced search engine can be considered a collaborative reading arrangement, which first allows curious visitors to “not read” the corpus being explored. Along with the predefined procedures guiding their exploration and automating the creation of visualization, visitors can invent distinctive uses enabling a more personal exploration of the information placed at their disposal. This principle is at the heart of an inquiry centered on the representation of women, making it possible to quantify their presence in their corpus, examine their practice of science and their professional activities, highlight the stereotypes characterizing their fictional embodiments, and reflect on their place in the fictional societies described in the corpus. The heuristic dimension of the data analysis therefore makes it possible to illuminate the processes of invisibilization at work and determine the narratives that propagate or, in contrast, resist them.
“La grammar e l’arte of sprichablar y scribir correctement” – exolinguistic exploration of the “Anticipation” database
Amélie Chabrier
This article proposes to explore the Anticipation database in order to establish a corpus and uncover fictional languages in anticipation narratives during the years 1860-1930. Do conlangs exist, as in contemporary audiovisual fictions, and how are they constructed ? How do they appear in the narrative ? Can one speak of an “absent paradigm” in these texts and to what effect ? Finally, what is the relationship of these texts to emerging linguistics and to “current linguistic developments” in the media in general ?
Literature of anticipation and science fiction : what link ? A phraseological light on corpus
Olivier Kraif, Iva Novakova and Julie Sorba
Our study examines the link between the literature of anticipation (1862-1931) and contemporary science fiction (1952-2014) through an innovative use of corpus linguistics tools, since the characterization of novelistic subgenres traditionally involves thematic analysis of the lexicon or distinction between reading regimes. Thus, we propose to identify lexico-syntactic constructions based on their recurrence and statistical significance and no longer solely in terms of influences or the author’s individual style. We hypothesize that a study of phraseological units specific to anticipation novels and science fiction from a diachronic perspective will indicate if a link can be established between the two novelistic subgenres. Our exploration of the corpuses allows us to compare them, in synchrony and diachrony, with a view to identifying the specific features of each : How do anticipation novels and science fiction each differ, specifically, from fiction of the same time period ? How do anticipation novels differ, specifically, from contemporary science fiction, and vice versa ?
