The Classification of Fiction

Fiction documents are among those most often requested from libraries and other informational agencies, yet subject heading lists and classification systems have not routinely provided for the subject analysis of works of fiction. This book's major purpose is to develop an experimental classification system for the content of fiction documents. The thoretical background and principles of the experimental system are treated in depth, including explicit techniques for handling anomalous, fuzzy and/or ambiguous data in fiction. The system draws on research from cognitive science, linguistics, and literary studies for insights into fiction analysis, and the experimental system contains four fiction-specific data elements (Characters; Events; Spaces; and Times) that are used to classify fiction documents in detail. Description and discussion of recent initiatives for providing subject access to fiction, both verbal and classifactory, are included, and the relationships of this system to other fiction analysis systems are addressed. In addition to information specialists, cultural anthropologists, literary scholars, and sociologists could benefit from such an information retrieval system. The book contains a number of figures illustrating theoretical concepts used in designing the experimental system and analyzing the results of its application to nineteen novels.