Robinson Crusoe's Stuff, pt. 1.

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So I'm doing this taxonomy thing, and I have an urge to post progress somewhere so I won't lose all sight of it in the morass of sadness that is this particular form of archive creation. I have finished the object/term listing for what I consider the opening section of Robinson Crusoe, wherein he is a man-child trying to go to Sea in defiance of God and Father and everyone with sense.

I am now into parsing his time as a slave, which goes much faster. I'm pretty sure I'm recording things that aren't anything like the objects I'm supposed to be focusing on, but honestly... rather do it and not need it than need it and have to go back and do it, right? And I know that making an archive is a pain, but even the work I've done this far tells me that it's necessary to do. I also did one for Swift's "Lady's Dressing Room," but as that's a not-overly-long poem, it wasn't too taxing (hah hah). In addition to potential objects, I'm listing out things like references for time and distance and communication and society and different types of people and economic concepts, etc. It's possible these could count as objects, in the greater scheme of things, but I'm pretty sure they don't. It's tempting to just list every capitalized noun, but I'm trying to avoid that. I'm also trying not to list things multiple times in the same section unless there's some distinction to call it out. This might be a problem later.

I am color-coding the sections, so that I have a notion about what portion of the book things will be in. I may, lord help me, eventually need to go back and count the number of times something shows up, but I don't THINK I will and I REALLY don't want to. If that comes up, surely I could track down a concordance that someone else has made, right? Or just do a search? Lord I hope I don't end up needing frequency or page references to examples. I think I can use the color coding to narrow down any searching I might need to do.

In any case, I'll pop back and discuss this more as I move through and sort of discuss the findings I come up with.

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