9. Selected Electronic Texts
Major Databases
Literature
Online (LION)
Literature Online (LION) is a collection of texts, indexes,
and reference tools. It includes over 340,000 works of poetry, drama and
prose. Primary texts include English poetry from 600 to the present,
American and African-American poetry from 1603 to the present,
The Faber Poetry Library, English drama from 1280 to 1915
and English prose from 1500 to 1900. Secondary sources include
LIFT, a literary journal index with full-text of selected articles,
the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature from
1920 onwards (with links to articles from the JSTOR collection),
the King James Bible, Webster's Dictionary, and links to other Web resources
and biographical information on authors.
Additional Databases (listed alphabetically)
ARTFL Project (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language)
Background Note
A collaboration between the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University of Chicago, the ARTFL database presents full texts of nearly 2,000 works representing a broad range of written French--in literature, philosophy, arts, economics and sciences. Novels, verse, theatre, journalism, essays, correspondence and treatises are included covering the twelfth to the twentieth centuries. The database is intended for literary and linguistic analysis, with advanced concordance capabilities. In addition to the texts described above, ARTFL has separate databases of Provençal poetry and French women writers and the B.A.S.I.L.E. database of over 1000 prose works in full text. ARTFL hosts an electronic version of Diderot's and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie and serves as a portal for the University of Chicago's other collaborative electronic projects.
Searching for texts and words in texts
From the main page, three links will be of particular interest as you do research for this class:
Select the Main ARTFL Database: FRANTEXT to search keywords in texts or to browse the bibliography of authors/texts included. Click on SEARCH and enter terms such as Author, Title, Genre (e.g. theatre), date (e.g. a range, 1650-1690, for example) or any combination of these terms. You may also search for words in the texts by adding terms in the "search text(s) for:______."
More searchable texts are located in the New Additions section of the site. The search protocols described above are available for this collection of texts, as well.
ARTFL Collaborations link will lead to the B.A.S.I.L.E. database, a collection of prose/narrative works from all periods. Hugo's Les Misérables, for example, will be here, readable and searchable in full-text.
ARTFL's Reference Works link will lead to the dictionaries mentioned below.
Extensive help and other instructions are located in the User Manual links from each of the above collections.
(Note: You will want to search both FRANTEXT and the New Additions for authors/texts. For Baudelaire, for example, you will find FRANTEXT contains Petits Poèmes en Prose (1962 Garnier editions) and New Additions contains Les Fleurs du Mal (1942 edition) and Petits Poèmes en Prose (1954 Gallimard edition).
Bertolt Brechts Werke
This first authorised electronic edition features the works of Bertolt
Brecht (1898 - 1956). The edition is based on Bertolt Brecht - Ausgewählte
Werke in sechs Bänden -Jubiläumsausgabe um 100. Geburtstag,
edited by Werner Hecht, Wolfgang Jeske and Jan Knopf, which collects Brecht's
works and writings in six volumes with brief notes on each text.
Dante Project (Dartmouth)
The Dartmouth Dante Project database combines computer technology with more than 600 years of commentary tradition on Dante Alighieri's major poem, the Divina Commedia. This gives scholars easier access to the full texts of important critical works, many of which are rare and difficult to obtain. Searchable by commentator, cantica, canto number, language, line number, notes, publication date, text.
Deutsche Lyrik im WWW
The Deutsche Lyrik im WWW database contains poems of about 100
authors written in the 17th to 20th centuries, and it will continue to
be expanded. Editions of texts have been chosen based on Wilpert/Gühring, Erstausgaben deutscher Dichtung (1992), supplemented by Hirschberg, Taschengoedeke (1924), Frenzel/Frenzel, Daten deutscher Dichtung (1953), as well as bibliographies of individual authors. The database
usually includes only one version of a work, although exception has been
made when a work has undergone extensive revision, for example, in the
works of Klopstock. Poems published in newspapers or leaflets are generally
excluded. The site is entirely in German.
Digitale Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker im WWW
Early English Books Online
Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digitized versions
of titles listed in the following reference sources:
Pollard & Redgrave's A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640 ("STC I") and
Donald Wing's A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England,
Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed
in Other Countries, 1641-1700 ("STC II") “
A search which limits to language (in keyword) may retrieve works in languages other than English, although most of the works in the database are in English. (e.g. La Fayette and kw: French will yield French editions).
Eighteenth Century Collections Online/ECCO
Access to digital images of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more. Texts can be searched by author, title, full text, front matter, indexes, place of publication and publisher. Languages include Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Welsh. Illustrations can also be searched.
Gallica
Begun in 1997 as the major digitization project at the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, Gallica includes full-text of over 100,000
volumes and 300,000 images covering the Middle Ages to the beginning of
the twentieth century, with an emphasis on nineteenth-century material.
Residing in Gallica are dictionaires and encyclopedias, journals,
manuscripts, recordings and images. Various collections compose "Les
Dossiers de Gallica," such as Gallica Classique (Garnier
editions), le dossier Proust, Voyages en France and
Voyages en Afrique.
From the main page, click on "Recherche" to search for literary texts (by title words, author, subject) or to search for words in texts via "recherche libre."
Goethes Werke im WWW. Weimarer Ausgabe
The chief component of this database of Goethes Werke is the Weimarer
Ausgabe, also known as the Sophien-Ausgabe, originally published
1887-1919 by Böhlau. The database also includes: Goethes Gespräche,
edited by Woldemar Freiherr von Biedermann (Leipzig, 1889-1896), as well
as letters published in: Goethes Werke, Nachträge zur Weimarer
Ausgabe, edited by Paul Raabe (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München,
1990). This site is entirely in German. Widener Library has the print
edition.
Kafkas Werke im WWW
The work of Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) has been one of the defining influences
that have shaped the literature of the twentieth century. This electronic
version of the critical edition of Kafka's complete works allows the user
to search Kafka's works and the development of his central themes.
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
This electronic text database provides full search access to the over 300 volumes in the major series, the Scriptores, Leges, Diplomata, Epistolae and Antiquitates, and 33 sub-series of the MGH.
Past Masters
The Past Masters series from InteLex Corporation comprises full-text
electronic editions of works by major philosophical figures, in both original
language and in English translation. Areas covered include the history
of political thought and theory, education, religious studies, economics,
classics, history and German studies. Texts include published and unpublished
works, articles and essays, and correspondence. Includes, among others:
Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury: Anselm, Opera Omnia
Thomas Aquinas, Saint: Aquinas, Works
Aristotle: Works
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. Augustine, Opera Omnia
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. Augustine, Works
Austin, J.L.: Works
Ayer, A.J.: Writings
Bentham, Jeremy: Correspondence
Bentham, Jeremy: Works
Berkeley, George: Works
British Philosophy: 1600-1900 -- Including works by Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, British Moralists (Selections), Anne Conway, John Locke, Bishop George Berkeley, David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick.
Calvin, Jean: Works of John Calvin
Collingwood, R.G.: Philosophical Texts
Continental Rationalists (Rene Descartes, Benedict de Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz)
Davidson, Donald: Essays & Inquiries
Descartes, Rene: Oeuvres Complètes
Dewey, John: Correspondence
Dewey, John: Works
Fichte, Johann: Sämmtliche Werke und Nachlass
Hegel, Georg: OUP Translations
Hegel, Georg: Werke (Vol. 1)
Hobbes, Thomas: English Works
Hume, David: Works & Correspondence
Kant, Immanuel: Hauptwerke
Kant, Immanuel: Philosophische Briefe
Kierkegaard, Soren: Journals & Papers
Kierkegaard, Soren: Samlede Værker
Knox, John: Works
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm: Philosophische Schriften
Locke: Works & Selected Correspondence
Luther, Martin: Sermons
Marx & Engels: Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Nietzsche, Friedrich: Nietzsches Werke
William, of Ockham: Work of Ninety Days
Peirce, Charles Sanders: Collected Papers
Peirce, Charles Sanders: Published Works I
Plato: Collected Dialogues
Poinsot, John (John of St. Thomas): Tractatus de Signis (Ars Logica)
Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill
Rationalists: Descartes-Leibniz-Spinoza
Santayana, George: Works
Sidgwick, Henry: Works & Select Correspondence
Weber, Max: Gesammelte Werke
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Collected Works
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Nachlas
Women Writers Online
The Brown University Women Writers Project, in its own words, " is a long-term research project devoted to early modern women's writing and electronic text encoding. Our goal is to bring texts by pre-Victorian women writers out of the archive and make them accessible to a wide audience of teachers, students, scholars, and the general reader. We support research on women's writing, text encoding, and the role of electronic texts in teaching and scholarship."
The site offers two methods of access to its online English literature texts: one, the full collection, Women Writers Online, and second, a subset of texts, Renaissance Women Online (RWO). To access Women Writers Online, select its link on the Women Writers Project home page. Then, to access Renaissance Women Online, select the RWO link on the Women Writers Online page. The full collection, Women Writers Online, presents all WWP texts currently available online, covering a period from 1400 to 1850. All of these texts can be browsed, searched, and analyzed using tools which provide access to the full SGML encoding. In addition, the site Renaissance Women Online offers an online environment for teaching and research in the field of Renaissance women's writing. When complete, it will present a group of 100 WWP texts from the early modern period, together with introductions to the individual works and essays on the cultural context of the period.
