Dictionnaire Historique et Critique
Pierre Bayle
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Headword and Full Text Search
The ARTFL Project now provides two ways to access the Bayle page image database. The first is by searching for article headwords or other milestones. The second is to search the full text of the index, the "Table du Dictionaire historique et critique". References within the index are configured as automatic links to the page images.
Call for contributions: the Pierre Bayle Collaborative Translation Project is a website providing open access to unabridged English translations of articles from Bayle's Dictionnaire.
Search the "Table du Dictionaire Historique et Critique"
Search the 5158 headwords (vedettes) and full text in a structured database in Pierre Bayle's DIctionnaire Historique et Critique, using accented characters and logical operators, described in the general PhiloLogic manual. The full-text contains 191,080 words and 19,511 unique words. Sample searches are provided below. Please report problems to Mark Olsen (mark@barkov.uchicago.edu).
Note: The text has not been corrected in any way. Many "f"'s have been captured as "s"'s. We suggest conducting searches accordingly (ex: for "effet", search for both "effet" and "esset").
Further Note: The thematic index was compiled by the editors of one of the eighteenth-century editions. It is prefaced by the following notice:
"L'Auteur n'aiant pu travailler à cette Table, elle a été donnée à faire à une personne très--habile; mais de peur qu'on ne la fît trop longue sans nécessité, on y a mis rarement ce qui apartient aux matieres dans leurs propres Articles: par ex emple, presque tout ce que l'on a marqué de César dans cette Table se trouve ailleurs que dans l' Article de CESAR."Pour l'usage de cette Table il faut remarquer, que le Chifre Romain indique le Tome, & l'Arabe la page. Lorsque le chifre est seul il indique le Texte, & lorsqu'il est suivi de la lettre a, ou b, il indique la prémiere ou la seconde colonne des Remarques; & si l'on y ajoûte la lettre n, on indique quelque Note marginale de la même colonne."
Examples
The following list indicates the values to enter in search form boxes.
headword=word means put word in the Headword box
word=word means put one or more word(s) in the Search articles
for box
Simple headword searches:
The search engine will search for any string of characters entered in the
headword box,
regardless of where that string appears in the headword(s) found.
For example, entering the string vil will find not only words
beginning with this string - e.g. ville, villars, villeroi,
villon, and so on,
- but also words with these letters in the middle,
- e.g. chevillier, droit civil, seville, incivilite, etc.
To limit a search to those words beginning with the string only,
enter the carat (^) before the first letter of the string.
This search will still find all words beginning with this string,
regardless of how they end.
Thus, ^vil will find villars, villaoicentius, ville,
villiers, villon, villes imperiales d'alsace, etc.
The headword search also allows users to search multiple terms at the same
time
using the OR operator: a vertical line (|).
For example: abelard|heloise.
Note that at this time the OR operator is not working.
This is a known problem, and we are working on it.
Accent and multiple form searches:
There are three ways to represent a word with its accent:
word=marque/
word=marqué
word=marquE
The last of these will find instances of both marque and
marqué.
Combined field searches:
These are useful for finding words within one or more given
entries/headwords only.
This is a good way to limit searches on common words, or words with more
than one meaning.
For example, searching fai.* retrieves 700 hits on the
morphological variations of faire.
Full text searches:
Full-text searching works to search across all dictionary entries for
single terms,
or using the AND and OR operators. For example,
word=guerre civile set phrase search;
or, word=guerre troy.*|troi.* set paragraph.
Notes: Keep in mind that, as with all earlier French texts, there may be orthographic variation, or antiquated word forms and spellings. These are not errors, as the f/s problem described above, but may will still require creative searching.