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#research/algerine#filter-one
The generic template
Filter one · build by 5 Jan 2027, before the corpus opens
What the form required, so you can tell it from what the author saw. The Barbary captivity narrative inherits from two lines: the Indian captivity narrative (Pearce 1947; Slotkin 1973) and the Puritan spiritual autobiography, which supplies the providential shape — affliction, endurance, deliverance. Every element below is a topos before it is a report.
A historian reading Foss for facts has no principled way to separate observation from convention. You do, and this is the instrument. Tick an element when you have confirmed it belongs to the repertoire; then, reading each text, ask of every claim: did the form require this? If yes, it is weak evidence whether or not it happened. If no, it gains weight — and goes to the ledger to face filter two.
What this feeds → Filter 1 of the two-filter procedure. The claims ledger's genre column. The Foss, Tyler and Rowson research sheets from January on.
The repertoire
Confirm each against Pearce, Slotkin and Baepler's introduction — then against the corpus itself. High generic pressure = low evidentiary value.
The inverse move
Where the finding is
Set this template against Merouche's quantitative data on prizes, ransoms and the fiscal organisation of la course. Where a text reports something the genre did not require and the counter-sources confirm, you have testimony the representation-focused scholarship has never used. That is the article only you can write.