A Social Network of Characters Appeared in the French Novel Series "La Comédie humaine" and An Interaction Network of Novels in the Series

This dataset presents a character social network and a novel interaction network derived from Honoré de Balzac's French novel series "La Comédie humaine", written between 1829 and 1848. This extensive series, which comprises a multi-volume set of interconnected novels, is grouped into eight thematic categories: "Scenes of Private Life," "Scenes of Provincial Life," "Scenes of Parisian Life," "Scenes of Political Life," "Scenes of Military Life," "Scenes of Country Life," "Philosophical Studies," and "Analytical Studies." Out of the 137 combined completed and uncompleted works, we've extracted the core texts of 80 novels. These narratives are interwoven, with characters appearing in several novels. Given Balzac's intention to portray 19th-century French society, particularly during the Restoration (1815-1830) and the July Monarchy (1830-1848), the characters' overlapping journeys across novels offer insights into the social commentary he intended to convey. We first constructed a social network of the characters based on their co-occurrence rates in the novels to delineate their significance and connection to the themes of this series. We then constructed an interaction network of the novels, taking into account the number of shared characters between any two novels. This method allowed us to identify patterns linking Balzac's use of characters with his methods of expressing the themes of his works.