Talk:Q8261
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Autodescription — novel (Q8261)
description: narrative text, normally of a substantial length and in the form of prose describing a fictional and sequential story
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Form or genre ?[edit]
If a novel is defined by the length of the text without any connection with the content then a novel is a literary form and not a literary genre. People mix genre and form, genre is related to content and form is related to text format. Snipre (talk) 20:07, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
- I would vote for a form. --Infovarius (talk) 09:12, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
- There is always a continuum in classification, I think, (that’s why it’s convenient to classify using instance of (P31) and subclass of (P279) and metaclassify to express if the class is more related to a genre-class or a form-class). But in that case, quoting frwiki Le roman est un genre littéraire, caractérisé essentiellement par une narration fictionnelle— it’s clearly in the french article considered a genre (translation : novel is a litterature genre, characterised mostly with a fictional narration) author TomT0m / talk page 11:17, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
- @TomT0m: I know that some classifications define roman, novel as a genre, but my problem is if roman and novel are a genre, how is defined fantasy, SF, erotic, historical,.. ? As genre too ? We can have a novel about SF or a roman about history so we can't put both types under the same property because we are mixing 2 different ways of classifying texts: one way is dedicated to the content and the other way to the form.
- Your reference to French WP article is good but is not covering a complete classification of texts and that's why I am reluctant to refer to it. Saying "Roman est un genre littéraire" is not appropriate to the micro level of a text.
- To find a solution to our current problem, I propose to create a new property in order to better describe a text. In my opinion, a text has to be described based on the content, the form, the typing (manuscript/printed), the support (scroll, ...) and the material. Each parameter requires a dedicated property and instance property should be used only to describe the FRBR classification (work/edition/exemplar). Snipre (talk) 09:58, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
- @EncycloPetey: Perhaps you should take part to that this discussion. Snipre (talk) 09:58, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
- A novel (roman) is defined by its length, not its content. To claim that "novel" is a genre would mean that The Brothers Karamazov (Q183157) and Pantagruel (Q537242) and Twilight (Q189378) are all in the same genre, which is ridiculous. The only things they have in common are the use of prose and their length. The novel is a literary form, not a genre. A work's genre describes its content, not its structure.
- @Snipre: I don't think we need a separate property to describe a work's form. The form is constant across all editions, and should be used with instance of (P31), because form describes the most essential aspect of what a work is. "What is this?" "It's a novel." or "It's a scholarly article." or "Its a play." The form should be used to describe what a work is. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:32, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
- This problematic distinction between genre and form and the difficulty to distinguish between them (many dictionaries define one in terms of the other) is the reason why the Library of Congress does not try to make a distinction and created the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (Q47537953) and used "genre/form". The Introduction to LCGFT deals with this by saying "Genres and forms may be broadly defined as categories of resources that share known conventions. More specifically, genre/form terms may describe the purpose, structure, content, and/or themes of resources. Genre/form terms describing content and themes most frequently refer to creative works and denote common rhetorical devices that usually combine elements such as plot and setting, character types, etc. Such terms may be closely related to the subjects of the creative works, but are distinct from them." UWashPrincipalCataloger (talk) 02:57, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
Hi,
Is novel (Q8261) really a subclass of fiction literature (Q38072107) ? The existence of the entity non-fiction novel (Q1325447) makes it impossible.
What could we do ?
CaLéValab (talk) 13:02, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
- @CaLéValab: non-fiction novel (Q1325447) does depict real persons and events but in a dramatized/fictionalized form. So I think that non-fiction novel (Q1325447) sits on the border between fiction and non-fiction, but it is not that big a contradiction as some labels suggest. - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 09:13, 12 September 2021 (UTC)