Digital Voltaire metadata identification
I am working on the metadata of the Complete Works of Voltaire (1968-2022). Embracing the conduits of
contextual and historical-bibliographical influence, my project endeavours to pair the proper nouns populating
the edition with their corresponding encyclopaedic entries, contributing to the enrichment of the Digital Voltaire
resource. Aušra Bukniute
Voltaire and Rousseau iconography
I am creating a subset database of the images from the VF’s collection of Voltaire iconography featuring Voltaire
with Jean-Jacques Rousseau to trace the relationship between these two prominent Enlightenment figures.
Charlotte Disley
Voltaire’s pots-pourris
As the first student sponsored by the Voltaire Foundation to study the new MSc in Digital
Scholarship at the University of Oxford, Joana Roqué Pesquer has been working on the Voltaire
Library Database for both her practicum placement and her final master’s thesis.
Nicholas Cronk, Joana Roqué Pesquer and Gillian Pink
(photography ©Keiko Ikeuchi)
She has focused on Voltaire’s 200
composite volumes titled pots-pourris and
their contents. These collections are literary
medleys that escape all definition, since they
are all diferent from one another, but one
of the elements that figuratively binds them
together is the fact that they are the only
works made and compiled by Voltaire that
have not yet been thoroughly explored by
scholars. Nevertheless, they are crucial to an
understanding of how Voltaire used written
sources to critically engage with literary
tradition.
Joana started analysing the collections
by cataloguing them while correcting
and updating the 1961 Russian-published
catalogue of Voltaire’s library. She has
created the first searchable database of
these collections, providing a draft digital
catalogue that recreates the complex inner
mechanisms of the pots-pourris (volumes
split into diferent sections within a collection, multiple
copies of the same edition bound together, sections
torn apart, etc.). Completing the dataset has allowed
her to carry out tabular data analysis on the titles of
the 2000 works that the collections contain, through
topic modelling and keyword extraction methods,
such as the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), to identify
the most relevant and frequent topics. The goal has
been to add fields in the catalogue such as ‘estimated
year of creation’, or ‘classifications’, so that further
research can be developed on the importance of
the pots-pourris and their historical context. As well
as upgrading current bibliographic information, and
creating a searchable digital resource, Joana’s thesis
investigates how these polychronic and multitemporal
compilations shape the literary text itself, by creating a
comparative and intertextual space inside each volume
that alters meaning
between the texts
and the thematic and
discursive relationships
that emanate from
them.
Discover more
about the
pots-pourris
catalogue here
VOLTAIRE FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT 2022/23 | 9