Using and Extending FRBR for the Digital Library for the Enlightenment and the Romantic Period - The Spanish Novel (DLERSN)

Spanish literature has been largely overlooked in the
development of the canon of European fi ction of the
Enlightenment, and literary criticism has traditionally treated
the eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Spanish
novel with indifference, when not with hostility. While
France, England, and Germany have produced print catalogs
of their novelistic production for this period, Spain still lacks
one. Manuals of literature constantly remind us of the void
in Peninsular Spanish literature in this genre, a sentiment
which has become a commonplace in literary scholarship.
Montesinos, one of the better informed scholars in the fi eld,
sees nothing but sterility in the Spanish eighteenth-century
novel of this “lamentable período” (Introducción a una historia de
la novela en España, en el siglo XIX, 40), and Chandler, like many
literary investigators of this period, concludes that literary
efforts were reduced to servile imitations of the masters of a
preceding age (A New History of Spanish Literature, 497). Such
perceptions are changing as the Spanish Enlightenment is now
becoming an important site of critical inquiry with a growing
body of scholarship. Spain produced a national body of fi ction
that was far superior in volume to the few acclaimed fi ctional
accounts and enjoyed great popularity among the general
readership of its day.
Extra-literary factors hindered but also shaped the Spanish
novel between 1700 and 1850. Given the extraordinary
popularity of novels through this period over the whole of
Europe and the fact that Spain closely followed French fashions
after Felipe V became the fi rst king of the Bourbon dynasty, it is
not surprising that Spain translated and adapted foreign novels
to its own geography, customs, and culture. The production of
Spanish novels picked up considerably after 1785, propelled by
the adaptation of European models published in translation. But
the country’s novelistic output suffered from a major set-back:
religious and government censorship, which was preoccupied
with the moral aspect of novel writing. Although translations
of foreign novels were widely read in Spain, the erudite accused
them of contributing to the corruption of the Spanish language.
Further, the novel as a genre disquieted censors and moralists
of the age. At best, the novel was condemned as frivolous
entertainment, devoid of “useful” purpose, to the extent that
Charles IV issued a decree forbidding the publication of novels
in 1799. The decree, however, was not consistently enforced,
but it did affect literary production. Given the dual censorship
– religious and civil – existing in Spain at the time, many novels
remained in manuscript form. Spain’s publishing and reading
practices remained largely anchored in the ancien régime until
the 1830’s, a decade that witnessed social transformations and
innovations in printing technology which dramatically altered
the modes of production and consumption in the literary
marketplace.
The Digital Library for the Enlightenment and the Romantic Period
– The Spanish Novel (DLER-SN), an international collaborative
project of scholars at the University of Kentucky and the
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científi cas in Madrid,
Spain, is creating an online resource center for the study of
the Spanish novel of the Enlightenment that extends into the
Romantic Period (1700-1850). This scholarly collection will
reconstruct the canon for the eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury
novel in Spain and, by joining bibliographic and
literary materials with an extensive critical apparatus, it will
constitute a quality reference work and research tool in the
fi eld of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Studies. The
overall objective is to foster new research on the signifi cance
of these Spanish novels by providing online open access to a
collection of descriptive bibliographic materials, critical studies,
and searchable full-text editions. The proposed poster will
outline the DLER-SN project and showcase the fi rst portion
of it: the development and implementation of the bibliographic
database that will serve as the backbone for the complete
digital collection.
To organize the DLER-SN Database, we turn to the Functional
Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), an entityrelationship
model for describing the bibliographic universe,
developed by the International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions (IFLA). FRBR allows us not only
to describe the individual novelistic works, but also to place
them within the context of the collection (i.e., within their full
eighteenth and nineteenth-century literary context). In this
way it is different from every other bibliographic resource of
the period of which we are aware.
A single novel may exist in one manuscript, written in Spanish;
a second manuscript that is a translation of the Spanish into
French; two separate printed editions of the Spanish; one
printed edition of the French; and several individual copies of
each edition, found in different libraries in the US and Europe. Entity: Work
In the FRBR model, the text of the original novel would be
identifi ed as the work. The FRBR guidelines are clear that the
concept of work is in fact separate from any physical object.
Although in our example the original novel is synonymous
with the Spanish manuscript, it is the story/ideas/text written
in the manuscript and not the manuscript itself that is the
work.
Entity: Expression
The manuscripts, both Spanish and French, are two expressions
of the same work. These expressions have relationships among
each other and with the work. In our example, both expressions
represent the same work, and they also relate to each other:
the French is a translation of the Spanish.
Entity: Manifestation
The editions – the actual print runs – are manifestations of the
expressions on which they are based. In the case of manuscripts,
the manifestation is the manuscript itself.
Entity: Item
The individual copies of the editions, as found in libraries and
private collections, are items which exemplify the manifestations.
Variations may occur from one item to another, even when the
items exemplify the same manifestation, where those variations
are the result of actions external to the intent of the producer
of the manifestation (e.g., marginal notation, damage occurring
after the item was produced, [re]binding performed by a
library, etc.). In the case of manuscripts, the item is the same as
the manifestation (i.e., the item is the manuscript itself).
The application of the FRBR model to the DLER-SN Database
is fairly straightforward, however there are three issues that
are specifi c to the Spanish novel that involve extensions to
the model.
New Work vs. Expression
In the FRBR model there is no clear dividing line between
assigning a modifi ed text as a new work or as an expression of
an existing work. To illustrate this problem, let’s add an English
version of our novel to the mix, since multiple versions of
stories written in different languages are common occurrences
during our period of investigation of the Spanish novel. Our
hypothetical English version clearly tells the same story as
both the Spanish and French expressions, but it is clearly not
a translation of either of them. Perhaps some characters are
left out and others are added, scenes are rearranged, etc. The
English version could be considered a new work or another
expression of the original work depending on the contextual
relationship we wish to emphasize. In order to emphasize
that there is a clear thematic relationship between the English
version and the Spanish and French versions (i.e., it tells much
of the same story), it could be reasonable for us to say that,
in this case and for our purposes, the English version is an
expression of the same work rather than a new work. However,
if in assembling our FRBR-oriented database we were to
choose to call the English version a new work, we would then,
perhaps, wish to experiment with the creation of a more
abstract category above work to illustrate that there is some
relationship (in character archetypes, leitmotifs, etc.) between
the different works.
“Masked” Works and Expressions
In the DLER-SN collection we have identifi ed two types of
“masked” works and expressions.
1. An author claims his product is a translation of another
text, but it is in fact an original product (the author is
claiming an expression of an existing work, but it is actually a
new work) – this is a “masked” work.
2. An author claims his product is an original when it is in
fact a translation of an existing text (the author is claiming a
new work, but it is actually an expression of an existing work)
– this is a “masked” expression. We will need to make decisions about how to identify these
products within our FRBR-based system. It may be most
reasonable to identify such texts as both work and expression
(there is nothing in the guidelines that disallows such multiple
designations); however, if so, we will need to identify them
appropriately as “masked”.
Censorship & Circumvention (Its
Effect on Work, Expression, Manifestation,
and Item)
In some cases censorship will be an issue – i.e., changes
made to texts to satisfy the requirements of the government
and the church can potentially have an effect on any level of
the hierarchy. If this is the case, we will need to determine
a method for identifying these changes and describing them,
perhaps identifying “types” of modifi cations:
• title changes
• prologues and prologue variations
• publication outside Spain
• personal (unoffi cial) reproduction and distribution
We also anticipate that there may have been illegal print runs
made of uncensored texts. If so, we will want to identify these
uncensored runs with a special designation in the system. An
especially interesting case would be a text that appeared in
both censored and uncensored printings.
The database will be an important educational tool as well
because it discloses a body of fi ction severely understudied (and
undertaught) due to lack of documentation and inaccessibility.
The DLER-SN Database will help scholars reassess the need for
modern editions and for new studies of these forgotten texts
which, nonetheless, constituted the canon of popular culture
of their time. It is important to note that only a dozen of these
novels enjoy modern editions. Once completed, our project
will give scholars in multiple disciplines the tools necessary to
begin serious work in this dynamic but underworked fi eld.
Bibliography
Reginald F. Brown. La novela española, 1700-1850 (1953).
Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, A New History of
Spanish Literature. Revised Edition. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press (1991)
José Ignacio Ferreras. Catálogo de novelas y novelistas españoles
del siglo XIX (1979).
Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records Final
Report, IFLA Study Group on the FRBR. UBCIM Publications
– New Series Vol 19. (http://www.ifl a.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.
pdf)
Dionisio Hidalgo. Diccionario general de bibliografía española
(1867).
José Montesinos. Introducción a una historia de la novela en
España en el siglo XVIII. Seguida de un esbozo de una bibliografía
española de traducciones de novelas 1800-1850 (1982).
Antonio Palau y Dulcet. Manual del librero hispano-americano
(1923-1927).
Ángel González Palencia. Estudio histórico sobre la censura
gubernativa en España, 1800-1833 (1970, 1934)
Francisco Aguilar Piñal. Bibliografía de autores españoles del siglo
XVIII (1981-1991).