ATILF University of Chicago

Database Home Bibliography Sample Searches Database-Specific Searching Tips User Manual Comments

New! - A new version of the Main ARTFL Database is now available. The new release inludes some 800 new texts and greatly enhanced search and reporting functionality under PhiloLogic3. Please follow this link to access the new database: ARTFL-FRANTEXT. The old version will be maintained until the end of 2008.

The FRANTEXT Database using PhiloLogic
Bibliographic Searching in order to limit a search by fields or to retrieve selected documents (accents are not required):
Author: (e.g., voltaire)
Title: (e.g., Contrat Social)
Genre: (e.g., theatre)
Date: (e.g., 1750-1789)

Note: The vertical line ( | ) is the OR operator (e.g., soldat|guerrier or histoire|historique). For pattern matching one may employ wildcard characters (e.g., fem.* will retrieve femme, feminin, femelle, etc.). Accented characters may be represented by two characters (e.g.,e\=è) or uppercase letters. For more help in searching see User Documentation below.

Search
Text(s) for: 		(e.g., rEvolution morale.*)

  

Select a Search Option:
A. (Default) Single Term and Phrase Search
B. Proximity Searching: in the same Sentence or Paragraph
    Separated by words in the same sentence.
Note: in proximity searches a space serves as the AND operator.

Select a Results Format:
A. (Default) Concordance Report (300 characters plus)  
B. KWIC Report (a single line of text)  
C. Frequency by Title  
D. Frequency by Author  

Browse the Complete Bibliography.

General User Documentation for PhiloLogic

Database-Specific Searching Tips

Bibliographic Searching:

Author: At this time the apostrophe in the author field is not working properly. This becomes a problem when searching for last names such as D'Alembert or D'Aubignac. To search for similar names, enter the last name without the particle (e.g. Alembert, Aubignac). Likewise, at this time accents are not working in the author field. To search for Molière, enter the name without accents: moliere. In addition, since authors' full names are not always complete, try searching with just the authors' last name (e.g. search for Racine rather than Racine J or Racine Jean).

Title: At this time the following punctuation marks and symbols produce a "No documents found" message: accent marks, parentheses (( )), semi-colons (;), colons (:), apostrophes ('), single and double quotes, and brackets ([ ]). Avoid using any of these symbols in the title field (e.g. in order to search L'Étranger, type in only etranger). To search for a title with any of these symbols embedded within the title itself, try searching for key words (e.g. outre tombe instead of Mémoires d'outre tombe). The following punctuation marks have no adverse effect on a title search and, if appearing within a string, must be entered: hyphen (-), question mark (?), and comma (,). In all cases, spacing must match exactly that in the bibliography.

Date: The texts in the database range in date from 1225 to 1964.

Genre: To limit one's search to a particular genre, simply enter the genre into the Genre Field. One may search more than one genre at a time; the vertical bar ( | ) serves as the OR operator (e.g., entering correspondance|memoires searches both). 
Count    Genre
  90  correspondance
  21  eloquence
  78  melanges litteraires
 122  memoires
  12  pamphlet
 228  poesie
  29  recit de voyage
 532  roman
 405  theatre
 332  traite ou essai

Orthographic Considerations:

Since the texts in this database are in French, it is important to remember that leaving off an accent in the search text(s) for: field is the equivalent of misspelling a word: the search engine will not find it. For details on how to represent accents and other diacritical markings, check the general documentation. One of the ways to handle this problem in cases where the user is unsure about the accent, or where the source data varies, is to simply turn on the Cap Lock and type in all uppercase, which will find the character with OR without the accent. Thus, entering THEATRE finds the word théâtre as well as theatre. This is best since accentuation is not always consistent (e.g., one finds not only révolution, but also revolution in the database).

Data-Entry Idiosyncrasies:

Several data errors have been detected in this database either from typesetting errors in the original source or from rekeying the documents. One should definitely avoid making arguments from silence.

Punctuation and Full-Text Searching

Hyphens: Hyphenated words in this database tend to have been separated during data-entry. Thus, one finds demi- heure instead of demi-heure and, therefore, one should search demi heure.

Apostrophes: At this time the apostrophe is not working for full-text searching. In order to search for words with an apostrophe, simply eliminate the apostrophe and type in the remaining word (e.g. typing EGALITE will find l'égalité).

Formatting and Display

Results Display: Please note that French copyright laws forbid full access to chapters and texts. Therefore, search results for these texts are limited to no more than three pages or paragraphs in either direction of the search terms, and links on these pages have been disabled.

Capitalization and paragraph breaks have been formatted automatically so expect some inconsistencies.

Note that 1ère appears as ôère in titles and search results.

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