Narrative Analysis

What is BESS?

Biographical Elements and Structure Schema (BESS) is an XML stand-aside schema that tags at the level of the paragraph. A team of editors creates separate XML files resembling abstracts of these short narratives (3-120 paragraphs). This allows us to compare versions of the same life across decades, and diverse lives in the same collection or the same social categories, and will build a kind of morphology of biography comparable to the structural narratology of Propp and others who studied the "functions" of the folktale. The elements of BESS:

• StageOfLife (which parts of the text narrate events in different phases of the persona's life?);
• Events (with AgentTypes, Locations, dates, etc.);
• Discourse (which includes narrative technique, figures of speech, quotation of other texts, etc.);
• Persona Description (how are these exemplary or "bad" women characterized in versions at different historical periods?); and
• Topos (this is an element for identifying scenarios or typical structures such as "influence" or "recognition" that underlie the overt action).

Editors choose from a controlled vocabulary of types of these elements.

<event namedEventKey="E00032">
    <textUnitRangeReference>
        <start>6</start>
        <end>7</end>
    </textUnitRangeReference>
    <type>marriage, arranged</type>
    <agentType>mother</agentType>
    <agentType>fiance</agentType>
    <agentType>male professional, named</agentType>
</event>
<event namedEventKey="E00033">
    <textUnitReference>6</textUnitReference>
    <type>escape</type>
    <type>wedding</type>
    <type>elopement</type>
    <agentType>officer, military</agentType>
    <agentType>lover, male, named</agentType>
    <locationSetting>Ireland</locationSetting>
    <locationSetting>city</locationSetting>
    <dateSingle standardDate="1837-07-23">July 23, 1837</dateSingle>
</event>