CTI Textual Studies  L i t e r a t u r e |
CTI Textual Studies L i t e r a t u r e |
Could you give me
information about French literary databases which can be searched on the
Internet?
The most useful and substantial on-line facilities are only available under subscription, though you will find that individual databases for specific works or authors may also be available free of charge from dedicated sites. I have described the main facilities which are available.
Frantext
The FRANTEXT database is the most substantial on-line facility which currently exists. The database is accessible from the Internet, and allows fast interrogation of over three-and-a-half thousand works which make up the database (which is constantly being expanded). The works range from the 16th to the 20th century; not all are literary works, but a great many major and lesser-known authors are represented. It is possible to limit a search to a particular author, genre or title, or to search across the entire database.
There is an annual subscription for use of the service. The cost for an entire institution (registered on a single IP address) is about £220 per year. Access is also available for individual users; INaLF can let you have more information about pricing.
Part of FRANTEXT is available freely at: http://zeus.inalf.cnrs.fr/frantext.htm. This enables users to carry out simple analyses of the FRANTEXT corpus, though the scope is partly limited as the texts have already been categorised.
Further information about the FRANTEXT World Wide Web service is available at: http://www.ciril.fr/INALF/inalf.presentation/24.htm though you will not be able to access the full database until you have registered. Registration operates on a machine-by-machine basis; you tell INaLF the Internet Protocol (IP) address for your machine and access will automatically be given to that particular machine.
For more information about FRANTEXT, contact:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,
Institut National de la Langue Française,
Grille d'Honneur-Le Parc,
92211 Sant-Cloud,
FranceTel: 01 41 12 35 45
Fax. 01 41 12 35 10
Email: arlette.attali@inalf.cnrs.frARTFL
ARTFL gives free but limited searching facilities of the INaLF database from a site in the United States. The database was created as a collaboration between the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University of Chicago. Full querying of the database is only available to subscribed institutions; limited searching of the texts will return results for word frequency. The web site is at: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/ARTFL.html.
ABU
On a less extensive scale, but free of charge, the Assocation des Bibliophiles Universels (ABU) provides a number of public domain electronic texts which can be interrogated on-line (keyword searching etc.). To date the corpus contains the works of 78 authors, though the list is growing. All texts are well documented. Titles can be accessed either complete or in discrete sections as html files. The ABU also offers some other on-line services, including a searchable lexicon. The web page for the ABU is at http://cedric.cnam.fr/ABU/.
(SP, FC)
HTML Authors: Sarah Porter, Frances Condron
Document created: 29 May 1997
Document last modified:30 March 1999The URL of this document is http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/enquiry/lit05.html