Medieval Narratives Between History and Fiction
Medieval Narratives Between History and Fiction

Author: Panagiotis A. Agapitos

Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9788763538091

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"The rise of literary fiction in medieval Europe has been a hotly debated topic among scholars for at least two decades, but until now that debate has come with severe limitations, focusing on ‘modern’ French and German romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Attempting to find common ground among scholars from various disciplines and regions, Medieval Narratives between History and Fiction seeks to clarify the subject by including a wide range of medieval narratives irrespective of their modern label and affiliation to certain disciplines. The chapters collected here broaden the discussion by moving beyond the canonical French and German romances, focusing mainly on texts in Greek, Latin and Old Norse (and also some in Serbian), and by opting for a ‘peripheral’ and a long-term view of the subject. The chapters take us from Graeco-Roman antiquity to medieval France, then to the Scandinavian lands and from there to south-eastern Europe and Byzantium as the link back to the Graeco-Roman world. This disposition also follows a spiral motion in time, leading us from antiquity to late antiquity and from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. By expanding the linguistic as well as the geographical and chronological scope of the debate, the book shows that we should not think of a ‘rise of fiction’ per se; rather, we should see fiction as a potential always imbued in and related to historical narratives – and recognize that non-fictional and non-vernacular writing are important for a modern understanding of medieval fiction."--

Medieval Tales and Stories
Medieval Tales and Stories

Author: Stanley Appelbaum

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-08-02

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0486143139

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Wide-ranging stories offer a glimpse into witchcraft, magic, Crusaders, astrology, alchemy, pacts with the Devil, chivalry, trial by torture, church councils, mercantile life, other elements of Middle Ages.

Inventiones
Inventiones

Author: Monika Otter

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0807863726

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Combining literary theory and historiography, Monika Otter explores the relationship between history and fiction in the Latin literature of twelfth-century England. The beginnings of fiction have commonly been associated with vernacular romance, but Otter demonstrates that writers of Latin historical narratives also employed the self-referential techniques characteristic of fiction. Beginning with inventiones, a genre dealing with the discovery of saints' relics, Otter reveals how exploring the fundamental problems of writing history and the nature of truth itself leads monastic or clerical Latin writers to a budding awareness of fictionality. According to Otter, accounts of conquests, treasure hunts, descents into underground worlds, and efforts (usually unsuccessful) to retrieve subterranean objects serve as self-referential metaphors for the problems of accessing and retrieving the past; they are thus designed to shake the reader's faith in historical representation and highlight the textuality of the historical account. Otter traces this self-conscious use of fictional elements within historical narrative through the works of William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gerald of Wales, Walter Map, and William of Newburgh. Originally published in 1996. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Narrative, Imagination and Concepts of Fiction in Late Antique Hagiography
Narrative, Imagination and Concepts of Fiction in Late Antique Hagiography

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-11-13

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9004685758

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This volume explores concepts of fiction in late antique hagiographical narrative in different cultural and literary traditions. It includes Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Persian and Arabic material. Whereas scholarship in these texts has traditionally focussed on historical questions, this book approaches imaginative narrative as an inherent element of the genre of hagiography that deserves to be studied in its own right. The chapters explore narrative complexities related to fiction, such as invention, authentication, intertextuality, imagination and fictionality. Together, they represent an innovative exploration of how these concepts relate to hagiographical discourses of truth and the religious notion of belief, while paying due attention to the various factors and contexts that impact readers’ responses.

Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond
Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-09-27

Total Pages: 550

ISBN-13: 9004307729

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This volume offers an overview of the rich narrative material circulating in the medieval Mediterranean. As a multilingual and multicultural zone, the Eastern Mediterranean offered a broad market for tales in both oral and written form and longer works of fiction, which were translated and reworked in order to meet the tastes and cultural expectations of new audiences, thus becoming common intellectual property of all the peoples around the Mediterranean shores. Among others, the volume examines for the first time popular eastern tales, such as Kalila and Dimna, Sindbad, Barlaam and Joasaph, and Arabic epics together with their Byzantine adaptations. Original Byzantine love romances, both learned and vernacular, are discussed together with their Persian counterparts and with later adaptations of western stories. This combination of such disparate narrative material aims to highlight both the wealth of medieval storytelling and the fundamental unity of the medieval Mediterranean world. Contributors are Carolina Cupane, Faustina Doufikar-Aerts, Massimo Fusillo, Corinne Jouanno, Grammatiki A. Karla, Bettina Krönung, Renata Lavagnini, Ulrich Moennig, Ingela Nilsson, Claudia Ott, Oliver Overwien, Panagiotis Roilos, Julia Rubanovich, Ida Toth, Robert Volk and Kostas Yiavis.

The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas
The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas

Author: Ármann Jakobsson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 131704147X

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The last fifty years have seen a significant change in the focus of saga studies, from a preoccupation with origins and development to a renewed interest in other topics, such as the nature of the sagas and their value as sources to medieval ideologies and mentalities. The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas presents a detailed interdisciplinary examination of saga scholarship over the last fifty years, sometimes juxtaposing it with earlier views and examining the sagas both as works of art and as source materials. This volume will be of interest to Old Norse and medieval Scandinavian scholars and accessible to medievalists in general.

Pachacuti: World Overturned
Pachacuti: World Overturned

Author: Lori Eshleman

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780866988063

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Three centuries after Columbus, uprisings in South America still held out the hope of a Pachacuti, or world-turning, which would reverse the fortunes of the Spanish and the Indians. One such revolt in the eighteenth-century Kingdom of Quito entwines the lives of three people in a story of desire and unextinguished hope that mirrors the complex relations between conquerors and the conquered. For Santiago Huamán the revolt sparks a quest to become a medicine man; for young Ana Alfaro it brings exile and an illicit love affair; and for the Jesuit inquisitor Gregorio Moncada, it precipitates spiritual doubt. From the baroque city of Quito to a remote hacienda in South America's largest crater, Pachacuti: World Overturned captures the grandeur and decay of the Spanish Empire on the eve of disintegration.

Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture
Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture

Author: Jane Fenoulhet

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2016-11-07

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1910634972

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This edited collection explores the ways in which our understanding of the past in Dutch history and culture can be rethought to consider not only how it forms part of the present but how it can relate also to the future. Divided into three parts – The Uses of Myth and History, The Past as Illumination of Cultural Context, and Historiography in Focus – this book seeks to demonstrate the importance of the past by investigating the transmission of culture and its transformations. It reflects on the history of historiography and looks critically at the products of the historiographic process, such as Dutch and Afrikaans literary history. The chapters cover a range of disciplines and approaches: some authors offer a broad view of a particular period, such as Jonathan Israel's contribution on myth and history in the ideological politics of the Dutch Golden Age, while others zoom in on specific genres, texts or historical moments, such as Benjamin Schmidt’s study of the doolhof, a word that today means ‘labyrinth’ but once described a 17th-century educational amusement park. This volume, enlightening and home to multiple paths of enquiry leading in different directions, is an excellent example of what a past-present doolhof might look like.

Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and Literary Structure in Late Medieval England
Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and Literary Structure in Late Medieval England

Author: E. Scala

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2002-08-16

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0230107567

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Absent Narratives is a book about the defining difference between medieval and modern stories. In chapters devoted to the major writers of the late medieval period - Chaucer, Gower, the Gawain -poet and Malory - it presents and then analyzes a set of unique and unnoticed phenomena in medieval narrative, namely the persistent appearance of missing stories: stories implied, alluded to, or fragmented by a larger narrative. Far from being trivial digressions or passing curiosities, these absent narratives prove central to the way these medieval works function and to why they have affected readers in particular ways. Traditionally unseen, ignored, or explained away by critics, absent narratives offer a valuable new strategy for reading medieval texts and the historically specific textual culture in which they were written.

Writing the Other
Writing the Other

Author: Nisi Shawl

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 9781933500003

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Many writers avoid creating characters of different ethnic backgrounds than their own out of fear that they might get it wrong. To address this fear, Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward collaborated to develop a workshop that addresses these problems with the aim of both increasing writers skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about getting it wrong. Writing the Other: A Practical Approach is the manual that grew out of their workshop. It discusses basic aspects of characterization and offers elementary techniques, practical exercises, and examples for helping writers create richer and more accurate characters with differences.