Grounding the Development of Ontologies for Fictional Characters

This article investigates the methodological foundations and theoretical assumptions behind the construction of computational ontologies for modeling narrative and fiction, with a focus on literary characters. We survey and critically assess a set of existing domain-specific ontologies for fictional narrative, evaluating their modeling strategies, taking into consideration their philosophical and knowledge representation criteria. Drawing from ontology engineering principles and foundational frameworks such as Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE) and Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), we propose a two-class ontology mapping methodology (harmonisation and alignment) to evaluate and foster semantic interoperability across the considered models. An experimental ontology pattern for fictional characters is then introduced and aligned with both DOLCE and BFO via International Committee for Documentation Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM), revealing the ontological commitments and modelling trade-offs required to formalise the nuanced nature of fictional entities. This study offers a preliminary attempt to explore how foundational ontologies might support conceptual clarity, while also highlighting the epistemological challenges involved in representing complex, non-referential cultural artefacts. Ultimately, this work aims to highlight the relevance of ontologies as a shared infrastructure for computational literary studies, supporting interdisciplinary collaboration, fostering Open Science and encouraging more structured, transparent, and conceptually grounded approaches to the representation and analysis of cultural phenomena.