52 Chapter 4 A Formal Description of Literary Characters using an Ontology
Thus, a relation between instances and text parts, which contain same information, but is expressed in different ways, can be performed.
4.3 Introduction to the Example Corpus 53
The second text is the first drama about the Faust story by Christopher Marlowe. It seems that Marlowe comes in contact with the material by an early English translation of the Historia.193 Two versions (1604 and 1616) of this drama have been released. It can be assumed that Marlowe‘s drama is taken by travelling acting troupes from Great Britain back to Germany where the play or parts of it appear and are also transformed into plays for puppetry.194 A larger time period separates Marlowe’s drama and the third text, Klinger’s novel (1791).
The tradition of writing Faust stories does not stop after Marlowe, but writers are not that productive creating new variations of this material. Merely, repeating earlier themes and motifs is common.195 Klinger’s story presents the first novel in this development.196 The novel is released soon after Goethe’s fragment of his Faust drama. Thereto, Hans J¨urgen Geerdts states: “Klinger wußte genau, daß er sich einerseits mit dieser Tradition auseinaderzusetzen hatte, daß er andererseits kurz nach dem Erscheinen des Fragments Goethes sich von jenem abgrenzen m¨ußte.”197Agreeing on this argumentation, one can add that in contrast to the other realisations of the devil and Faust characters, the devil in Klinger’s novel is called “Leviathan”
and Faust is introduced as a typographer. In the analysis part of this thesis (cf. section 7.1.2), the differences between the conceptions of Goethe’s dramas and Klinger’s novel are investigated.
After Goethe’s fragment, the drama “Faust - Der Trag¨odie Erster Teil” is published in 1808.198 It is assumed that Goethe knows some material of the Faust story through puppetry.199 One can say that most attention in research is paid to this work and its second part, “Faust - Der Trag¨odie Zweiter Teil”, which is released in 1832. In 1836 after the release of Goethe’s two works, the complete Faust story of Nikolaus Lenau is printed, which is only partly printed before. The story is presented in a mixture of epic, lyric, and dramatic elements.200
The example corpus is not arranged for the purpose of presenting a complete anthology, the text were chosen exemplarily from the Faust literature to test the selected theories for the description of literary characters.201
193see Hendel 1969, pp.13/14
194see Hendel 1969, p.14
195The Faust story appears in two kinds of performance: On the one hand, some writers arrange new editions of the story by repeating and copying, like Georg Rudolf Widmann or Der Christlich Meynende. On the other hand, there are several hints that a lot of plays telling the story of Faust and the devil are performed. But these plays are assembled from already existing sources.
196Hendel 1969, p.15
197Geerdts 1960, p.61
198Hendel 1969, p.19
199Hendel 1969, p.16
200Sengle 1980, p.668
201In the period of “Sturm und Drang”, further works around the Faust motif appeared, like Maler M¨uller “Fausts Leben dramatisiert” (1778). Especially after the middle of the 19th century, this motif is transferred into other forms of art like opera or ballet. Further, one can mention that the topic is highly varied or enlarged, like in Christan Dietrich Grabbe’s “Don Juan und Faust” (1828), Michail Bulgakow’s “Der Meister und Margarita” (1940), or Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s “Faust. Der Trag¨odie dritter Teil” (1862). In the 20th century, the novel “Doktor Faustus” by Thomas Mann becomes important because of its relations to WW II. Until today, authors, composers, and songwriters have picked the Faust story out as a central theme.
54 Chapter 4 A Formal Description of Literary Characters using an Ontology
For detecting possible applications, the descriptions of devil characters found in the selected texts are integrated into the proposed ontology. At the moment, only the devil characters are described and included in the ontology. It is assumed that these characters have features in common, because their conceptions refer to the same or similar sources and traditions.
Thereby, it is expected that common classes describing the literary characters in the ontology can be found.
During the centuries, a steady development of devil characters occurs and is influenced by philosophical schools, religious trends, and mythical images. So, differences and variations of the conceptions are expected making comparative analysis possible. Furthermore, this challenges a modelling using an ontology, having besides core classes also individual or flexible parts allowing for such variations in the characters.
Another reason for this selection is that the devil characters are a mixture of human-like, mythical and supernatural creatures and contain a huge range of features. For example, they are often depicted in human form, e.g. scholastic or monk, but also they appear as fantastic creatures, like dragons, or animals, like dogs. Thereby, it can be proven how features beyond human behaviour can be described. As mentioned in chapter 1, a goal of this thesis is to draw analytical conclusions about the characters by using the description and classification of the devil characters of the ontology.
To test the descriptive capability of the ontology, an additional character is introduced. The character is “the usurer” in the short story “The Mysterious Portrait” (1842) of Nikolai Gogol, which was first introduced as a portrait bought by a young artist. The specific attributes of this portrait are the nearly living and terrifying eyes of the portrayed man. The artist feels that he is strongly influenced by this portrait and starts to have visions in which the portrayed man appears. In the second part of this story, the man in the picture is presented as a usurer who wants to be portrayed by a locale painter so that he can stay alive through this picture.
Two parallel descriptions of this character are included in the ontology, one by the author of this thesis and one by a trained colleague. In chapter 8, a comparison of these descriptions is given.
Up until now, further characters are described in the ontology. One is the character of a cleric called “Pfaffe Amis” which was described by a second colleague. This character appears in a Middle Age novel of “Der Stricker”. The life of the cleric is described in twelve stories. Mostly, situations are shown that present betrayals or tricks of the cunning character. Furthermore, a character called “Rat-Wife” appearing in the drama “Lille Eyolf” of the Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen is included in the ontology. In addition, the original text in Norwegian is related to the ontology. For testing an application described in section 6.2, the character Melmoth of the novel “Melmoth the Wanderer” (1820) of Charles Robert Maturin is also attached to the ontology.
After introducing the theoretical background of this thesis, in the next chapters, different methods and applications using the ontology are described. There, a more technical side of this approach is focused on observing methods for a further processing and conclusions about the efficiency and suitability of these methods concerning usages in the humanities are given.
4.3 Introduction to the Example Corpus 55
Afterwards, devil characters of the example corpus are analysed and compared by incorporating the here developed ontology in the analysis proven.
56 Chapter 4 A Formal Description of Literary Characters using an Ontology
Chapter 5
OWL DL and Logics
Beyond structuring information by using an ontology, an important aspect of OWL ontologies is further processing of the included data. Because of their special nature, data in OWL is already structured hierarchically (super-sub class) and marked with semantic information. In comparison to other methods, ontologies, especially stored in OWL DL, consist of a framework of axioms. This means: “...OWL is a semantic web ontology language [...] whose the semantics can be defined via a translation into an expressive DL.”202 Thereby, querying such ontology based on logic reasoning becomes possible. Logic reasoning can be probably helpful (i) to check consistency during ontology development (ii) enables semi-automatic merging of (domain) ontologies as well as (iii) deduces hidden information contained in the ontology. Since the ontology for literary characters has been implemented in OWL, it seems to be reasonable to explore the possibilities of logic reasoning in the context of literary character analysis.
In general, by using logic reasoning, conclusions can be gained which are inferred from given information or other conclusions. In formal logic, given information is also called assumption.
The operation is defined as conclusion. The methods induction203 and deduction204 are sub-sumed under the term ofLogic Reasoning. Induction means inferring from special concepts to general concepts whereas deduction constitutes the opposite process from general concepts to special ones. Here, the conclusions can only receive the values true or false, unclear conclusions like in the Fuzzy Logic cannot be drawn. The assumptions of the induction have to be true so that a conclusion can also be constituted as true. The conclusion is called an inference.
To operate on data that is formatted in Description Logic, inference algorithms are developed.
These algorithms are implemented in different programmes like for example DL reasoners, pro-grammes which can query in OWL data. Before going on, a short summary of the Description Logic whose ideas are included in OWL DL is given. In sections 5.2.2 and 5.2.4 two applica-tions for inferring on the ontology are outlined. Finally, this chapter closes with a conclusion summarising the results.
202Baader, Horrocks, and Sattler 2003, p.13
203Charniak and McDermott 1985, p.22
204Charniak and McDermott 1985, p.14
57
58 Chapter 5 OWL DL and Logics
5.1 Description Logic
In the OWL specification, which is used in this work, logic-based methods as well as a kind of XML mark-up are included. Because of this special mixture, the comprehension of OWL seems to be a little bit difficult. But the knowledge of OWL is essential for understanding further applications applied in this approach.
In 1980, DL was developed on the base ofsemantic networks andframes. This term is used as a superordinate concept for a language family that contains logic-based representation languages.
These languages allow a structured information representation. Baader et al. state: “In a logic-based approach, the representation language is usually a variant of first-order predicate calculus...” 205 This means that the constructs of DL are related to the first-order calculus.
For this reason, applications based on logic formalism likereasoning can be performed.
In DL, the information is mostly divided into concepts, roles, and individuals. The concepts form a structured terminology, which is defined as a TBox (terminological box) in DL. The main structure of a TBox is the subsumption. This means that general concepts include more special ones. Individuals in DL are integrated in a so-called ABox (assertional box). An ABox contains information of the modelled extract of the real world and can be seen as its description. Baader et al. also explain that the roles can be used to show relations between single individuals.206 Thus, individuals of an ABox are supplied with a name. It is possible to allocate properties to them.
The semantic of TBox and ABox is similar to a set of axioms of the first-order calculus.207 Their implicit information can be made explicitly by drawing inferences.