Narrative Units

Narrative Units in the main content

In the following example from London, British Library, BL Add. 16,217 a main content of the manuscript could not be identified with a Textual Unit. It has been associated with a Narrative Unit instead.

            <msItem xml:id="ms_i3">
              <locus from="19" to="21"></locus>
              <title ref="NAR0009history" xml:lang="gez">ሐሳበ፡ ዓለም፡</title>
                ...
            </msItem>
          

This is the same which you would do for a Textual Unit (see the page on manuscript contents).

In the following example from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodleian Bruce 93 you can see how the same Narrative Unit is used for different contents. Narrative Units, since they are not bound to a sequence, can be used like here for several land donations.

            <msItem xml:id="p2_i3.3">
              <locus target="#93r"></locus>
              <title type="complete" ref="NAR0001gwelt">Land
                donation by <persName ref="PRS11688WalattaM"></persName></title>
               <textLang mainLang="gez"></textLang>
              </msItem>
            <msItem xml:id="p2_i3.4">
              <locus target="#93r"></locus>
              <title type="complete" ref="NAR0001gwelt">Land
                donation by <persName ref="PRS8595SayfaAr"></persName></title>
              <textLang mainLang="gez"></textLang>
            </msItem>
          

Narrative Units in quaternary strata

The page about documents gives some examples of how to use Narrative Units and Textual Units to identify a content. This will happen basically in the same way as in the above example, with a <title>↗ element.

Narrative Units to associate different parts of a text

Narrative Units can also be created for text portions (paragraphs, chapters, miracles, etc.) which are extant as different versions in multiple recensions of the same work or even in different works. Creating these narrative units allows displaying in the app all the existing interrelated versions of that text. See, e.g., NAR0013pelican, i.e., the chapter on the pelican in the different versions (see section Versions in the page about work description) of the Physiologus. Once a single narrative unit ID is provided as <div>↗ with @corresp in correspondence of the text edition in the Work records of the different recensions (e.g., <div type="textpart" subtype="chapter" xml:id="ch4" n="4" corresp="NAR0013pelican">↗), all the existing versions of that narrative unit will be visualized in the app by clicking the Versions button in the Text page of the work record.

Linking Narrative Units and Keywords

In some cases, the Narrative Unit will be especially related to a Keyword defining a type for an addition, for example.

While the encoder should remain free to associate to a given Narrative Unit and independently assign a type to an addition, you might at the same way want to associate the two.

You can do that quite simply using a <relation>↗ like the one below from Land donation.

              <relation name="skos:broadMatch" active="NAR0001gwelt" passive="bm:LandGrant"></relation>
          

This will state an association between any Land donation which has been identified with a specific Narrative Unit, with a type. It can indeed be a many-to-many kind of relationship, so that you can state if relevant.

This is preferred compared to the use of a keyword, in this case, because a narrative unit would not support the definition of its content which is loose by definition.