fleischman1983

Wesleyan University
On the Representation of History and Fiction in the Middle Ages
Author(s): Suzanne Fleischman
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Oct., 1983), pp. 278-310
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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ON THE REPRESENTATIONOF HISTORY AND FICTION
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
I.
INTRODUCTION
Wenn ich das alles recht bedenke, so scheint es mir, als wenn ein Geschichtsschreiber notwendig
auch ein Dichter sein miisste, den nur die Dichter mbgen sich auf jene Kunst, Begebenheiten
schicklich zu verkniipfen, verstehen!
Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen
One of the criteriainvoked by Hans-RobertJauss in his theory of medieval
literarygenres to distinguishepic from romanceis the degree of historicity
whichthe purveyorsand the consumersof medievaltexts attachedto theirsubject matter.' The Old Frenchchansonde geste, Jauss maintains,containsan
historicalcore: it treatsof known eventsand agentsstill presentin the collective memory.By contrastthe legendof KingArthurand his knights,through
a long process of temporal and geographic displacement, had become
sufficientlydetachedfrom its historicalmoorings and overlaidwith fantasy
that it was receivedby a twelfth-centuryFrenchpublicas fiction, as Romance,
whose truth was of a differentorder.2
My point of departurefor the presentinquiryis an assumption,implicitin
Jauss'sdiscussionand that of other analystsof medievalforms of discourse,
that in the MiddleAges historyand fiction were conceptuallydistinct. I propose to explorethe natureandlimitsof suchan oppositionand to test its utility
as a criterionfor genreclassification.Underexaminationhere will be selected
literaryand historiographicaltexts from medievalSpain, France, Provence,
and England.If historyand fiction-wereindeeddiscretecategories,then where
did one end and the other begin?
To be sure, the magnitudeof this questionfar exceedsthe scope of a single
1. I havechosenthe terms"purveyors"
and"consumers"
(withno Marxistimplications)in order
to remainneutralon the matterof oral vs. writtencompositionand diffusion,these issuesbeing
of no directconcernhere. The term"text"shouldthereforebe understoodto includeoral texts,
and wherefor conveniencethe term"writer"is used it is likewisemeantto includepurveyorsof
oral texts.
2. Hans-RobertJauss,"Chansonde gesteet romancourtois"in Chansonde gesteundhbfischer
Roman (Heidelberger
(Heidelberg,1963),61-77. See also "Litterature
medievaleet
Kolloquiurmi)
theoriedes genres,"Poeitique1 (1970), 79-101 for an elaborationof this typologyof medieval
genres.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
279
investigation. But the very act of posing the question, of probing the medieval
boundaries of these categories, should, if nothing else, enhance our awareness
of the distances separating our own modes of perception and representation
from those of the High Middle Ages. It is such an awareness that forms the
cornerstone of a reception-oriented literary history, and it is such an approach
to literary history that has the potential to yield the most fruitful insights into
the textual production of societies far removed temporally and culturally from
our own.3
Before tackling head on the opposition between historical and fictional discourse in the Middle Ages, I might anticipate a possible objection concerning
the basic formulation of the question. One might argue that the question
addressed here is only a pseudo-problem which arises in the context of our
contemporary critical preoccupation with taxonomies and oppositionally
defined systems. In a sweeping survey of the relationship of history to
literature from Antiquity through the present (and one which skips curiously
from Quintilian to the Renaissance, playing leapfrog, as it were, over the
Middle Ages), Lionel Gossman observes that:
For a long time the relationshipof historyto literaturewas not notablyproblematic.
History wasa branchof literature.It was not untilthe meaningof the wordliterature,
or the institutionof literatureitself beganto change,towardthe end of the eighteenth
century,that historycame to appearas somethingdistinctfrom literature.4
If we acknowledge the validity of this judgment, then there are two alternative directions in which we can proceed. We could call an immediate halt to
our investigation, satisfied that the basic question has been answered by the
acknowledgment of history as a subcategory of literature. To be sure certain
theorists might not find this decision at all objectionable. But because for so
long history and literature were not exclusive, Gossman proposes that we revise the terms of the opposition from history and literature to historical and
fictional narrative,5 and proceed, on the basis of these categories, to carry out
a legitimate contrastive inquiry.
3. For a formulation of the basic tenets of Rezeptionsaesthetik with particular reference to the
Middle Ages, see Hans-Robert Jauss, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,"
inaugural lecture at Constance. First published in German (1967); first English translation in New
Literary History (1970), 7-37 reprinted in New Directions in Literary History, ed. Ralph Cohen
(Baltimore, 1974); also Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "Strangeness as a Requirement for Topicality:
Medieval Literature and Reception Theory," L'Esprit Createur 21 (1981), 5-12.
4. Lionel Gossman, "History and Literature" in The Writing of History: Literary Form and
Historical Understanding, ed. Robert H. Canary and Henry Kozicki (Madison, Wisconsin, 1978),
23. Henceforth cited in the text by page number.
5. The ontogenesis of this opposition between historical and fictional writing -how it arose and
why it has remained virtually unchallenged in Western thought for so long - is sketched by Hayden
White, "The Fictions of Factual Representation" in Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore, 1978), 122ff.
Two other essays reprinted in this volume are also germane to our discussion: "Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination," 101-120, first published History and Theory, Beiheft 14
(1975); and "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact," 81-100 (also published in Canary and
Kozicki, The Writing of History, 41-62). All subsequent page references to these essays are from
Tropics of Discourse.
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280
SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
For a discourseanalyst such as Hayden White, however,this is wherethe
difficultiesbegin. It is at the moment we attemptto "narrativize,"
that is, to
give realevents,whichdo not offerthemselvesintrinsicallyas stories,the form
and coherenceof a story, that the matterof separating"the discourseof the
real" from "the discourse of the imaginary"or "discourseof desire"(the
particularformulationis Lacan's)becomes problematic.6Paradoxically,the
appeal of historicaldiscourselies preciselyin makingthe real desirable.And
this transformationis accomplishedby imposingupon the unordereddata of
historythe formal organizationof stories, by demandingthat eventsthat are
representedas real "displaythe coherence,fullness, and closure of an image
of life that is and only can be imaginary,"notwithstandingthe inevitableresistance of the data to the coherencyof this image with which we try to make
sense of them.7It might appeartautologicalto point out that this dilemma
only presentsitself in a society which has alreadydevelopeda certainlevel of
historicalconsciousness,for only then is the storytellerconfrontedwith two
differentorders of events as possible componentsfor his stories which he is
obliged to keep separate.
Most medievalstorytellers,whetherthey billed themselvesas observersand
recordersof eventsor as entertainers- or both- understoodfull well the value
of tellinga good story. And if by our standardsthey failed in many instances
to keep the two ordersof eventsunmixed,this should not ipsofacto be interpretedto mean that a distinctionbetweenhistoryand fiction did not exist for
them. It may simplyhave been the case that the termsof the oppositionwere
construeddifferentlyfrom the way they are today.
The evidencepresentedin the remainderof this discussionsuggestsstrongly
that the purveyorsand consumersof medievaltexts did discriminatebetween
historicaland fictionalmodes. We might thereforebe better advisedto take
the alternativerouteto that suggestedhypotheticallyabove, and seek to determine how the medievalcategoriesof historyand fiction;hencethe opposition
itself, differedfrom our own.
I proposeto go about this by looking at the opposition from a numberof
differentperspectives-six to be exact-each of which might offer a window
6. HaydenWhite,"TheValueof Narrativityin the Representation
of Reality,"CriticalInquiry
7 (1980), 23f. It is to our "Westernprejudicefor empiricism"that Whiteattributesthe demand
that realitynot only correspondpoint-by-pointto some extra-textualdomain of occurrenceor
happening,but also thatit be coherentin its structure("Fictionsof FactualRepresentation,"
122).
On the "narrativist"
and "anti-narrativist"
viewsof history,see Paul Ricoeur,"L'histoirecomme
recit"in La Narrativitei,ed. DorianTiffeneau(Paris, 1980), 3-24.
7. White,"TheValueof Narrativity,"27. ElsewhereWhitetakesthe argumentfurther,claiming that the imageof coherencyand orderlinessthat informsnarrativizedhistoriography
-or the
narrativediscourseof any disciplinethat seeksto be realisticin its representation
of the world-is
constructedthroughlinguistic"turns"alone, that is, by meansof rhetoricalstrategiesand tropologicalmodesof representation:
metaphor,metonymy,synecdoche,irony. (Amongthe essaysin
Tropicsin whichthis themeis developed,see especially"TheFictionsof FactualRepresentation";
See also the Introductionto White'sMetahistory[Baltimore,1973],31-38.)
8. White, "TheValueof Narrativity,"24.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
281
into the natureof the relationshipof the two categoriesfor the periodin question. Sincethese investigativeparametersoverlapto some extent, it will facilitate mattersto characterizeseveralof them briefly at the outset, before proceedingto elaborateand illustratethem all in the remainderof the discussion.
In the interestof expositorycoherence,the developmentof the argumentwill
not follow strictlythe orderin whichthese parametersare initiallypresented,
but ratherwill integratethem in a sequencedeterminedby logical associations
and functionaloverlap.
II.
AUTHENTICITY
The firstand most obvious angle from whichto approachthe questionof history vs. fiction involves evaluatingthe authenticityof purportedlyhistorical
material:to what extentdoes the configurationof events and personagesin a
text correspondto historicalfact, insofar as we can ascertain,and to what
extentis it merely"fancifulinvention,figmentsof the imagination,"as fiction
was definedin the fourteenthcentury.9In this connection,however,Zumthor
points out that sincethe "realfacts"will alwaysremaininaccessible,effortsto
establishhistoricalauthenticityare necessarilydoomedto failure.10In an absolute sense this is of coursetrue. And it is equallytrue that literaryhistorians
andhistoriansof eventsas well are often guilty of operatingwith the illusory
premisethat a value-neutralaccountof the facts, priorto interpretationsand
analyses, is available or even possible. Yet to eschew for this reason any
attemptto judgethe historicalmeritof a text servesonly to foreclosethe possibility of furtherinsightsfor whicheven an approximatedeterminationof historical accuracyprovidesa startingpoint. We shall, therefore,retainthis criterion as a point of departure,keepingin mind its limitations.
The next two approachestake us outside the texts themselvesto their purveyorsand consumersrespectively,and involvelookingfor testimonyconcerning author'sintentionsand audiencereception.
III.
INTENT
Intentionalityhas been for some time a vexed question in literarycircles, in
certaincampsalmosta dirtyword." But for our purposeit is importantto ascertain,whereverpossible, whethera text was intendedas fact or fancy-not
that poets' or narrators'claimsof authenticitycan necessarilybe taken at face
value. Such truth claims may well have been little more than a convention,
9. "Invention fabuleuse, fait imagine a plaisir" (Wartburg, Franzisisches Etymologisches
Wdrterbuch,s.v. fictio).
10. Paul Zumthor, "Autobiography in the Middle Ages," Genre 6 (1980), 30.
11. For an overview of the "intentionalist controversy" and a cogent defense of intentionality,
see E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, 1967).
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282
SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
whichmay or may not have correspondedto authors'actualbeliefs about the
factual accuracyof their material.12
This of courseraisesthe questionof what medievaltext producersand their
audiencesunderstoodby historicaltruth. We shall attemptto piece together
an answerto this questionafter furtherevidencehas been broughtto bear on
it. But whateverthe actualtruth value of these claimsmay have been (which
can neverbe known), the fact that thereproliferatedconventionsfor marketing verisimilitudeis itself significantin the presentcontext.
IV.
RECEPTION
A thirdanalyticparameterpertinentto our investigation,and conceivablyone
of the most promising,focuses on how texts were receivedby their intended
audiencesand by posterity.A reception-orientedapproachto literaryhistory
(seenote 3) has beensummedup by one of its mainpractitionersas "anhistorical pragmaticsof the text." Its emphasis, as the name implies, is on the
reader-or auditor, or spectator, as the case may be-and specifically on
differencesbetween the intellectual assumptions of medieval and modern
audiences."3
Withregardto the questionposed here, such differenceswill turn
out to be crucial. What one might look for specificallyin this context is
evidenceof the effect of poetic texts on history and on historiography,since
heretofore the relationshiphas generallybeen explored from the opposite
direction,that is, how historyhas shapedsuch literarygenresas the medieval
epic, romance, and historicaldrama.
V.
SOCIAL FUNCTION
A fourthparametergermaneto our inquiry,and one whichwould also qualify
as "pragmatic"(as the term is understood by linguists and philosophers)
concernsthe social functionof the text. For the broadperiodin questionsuch
functions included:celebrationor commemoration,instructionand edification, moral-ethicalexemplification,glorificationand panegyric,propaganda
and persuasion, and so on, with overlap among them."4Social function is
obviouslyrelatedto the two precedingparameters,intent and reception,and
we might formulatethe relationshipusingthe categoriesof speech-acttheory.
If the purveyor'sintentcorrespondsto an act of illocution,and the consumer's
12. This line of argumentis developedby JeanetteM. Beer,NarrativeConventionsof Truth
in theMiddleAges(Geneva,1981).Truth,as Beerdemonstrates,wasnot equatablewithhistorical
fact; on the contrary,"truthand fact werepolarized,withpreferencefor the formeroverthe latter
in contextsof apparentconflict"(10).
13. Gumbrecht,"Strangenessas a Requirementfor Topicality,"4. See also Jauss, "Literary
Historyas a Challengeto LiteraryTheory."
14. These particularcategories,based on social function, were devised by JonathanBeck,
"GenreTheoryandFrenchDrama:Medievalto Modern"(forthcoming),to replacethe traditional
paradigmfor classifyingFrenchdramabased on "external"features.An analogousfunctional
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
283
receptionto perlocution,then social functionas understoodhereis a pragmatic parameterthat encompassesboth facets of the speech act.
Severalrecenttypologiesof medievalFrenchliterarygenresstartout by contrasting two broad categories: historical and fictional, whose functions in
society are ostensibly quite different.Twelfth- and thirteenth-centuryepics,
like the historical drama of the fifteenth and early sixteenthcenturies, are
acknowledgedto have serveda commemorativefunction: each performance
constituteda ritualcelebrationof greatfiguresof the past, a communalact of
self-affirmationand identification.These historicalgenres functionedas the
collectivememoryof a communitythat was largelyunlettered.By contrast,in
the so-calledfictionalgenres-Arthurian or chivalricromance, and later the
farcesand moralityplays (thoughtherewerealso historicalmoralityplays)such ritualjogging of the collectivememorywas replacedby the unfoldingof
new and familiarplots, whosetruthwas not to be soughtin the immediateand
objectivesenses historicusof an immanentpast, but in a second meaning,a
senses moralis,whichhad to be interpreted.Plots wereinvented,whose social
function was to reinforce, typicallythroughexemplification,not so much a
collectiveidentityas value structuresand codes of conduct.1
Whilea functionaloppositionof the type "commemorationvs. exemplification" may provide a convenient heuristic device for typologizing literary
genres,"6the usefulnessof such an oppositionwhenappliedto a broaderspectrum of texts for the purposesof discriminatingbetweenhistory and fiction
remainsto be determined.If we take the chronicletraditionto representthe
"official"historiographyof the medievalperiod,17 includedin which are both
clericaland aristocratictexts,18 then it appearsthat the latter-the more pertinent of the two types for our inquiry-in additionto theircommonlyrecognized panegyricand/or propagandafunctions,instantiatequite clearly,as we
shall see below, the exemplaryfunction which certaintheoristshave reserved
for fiction.
typologyfor the medievalRomanceepicis proposedby JosephJ. Duggan,"Appropriation
of HistoricalKnowledgeby the VernacularEpic:MedievalEpic as PopularHistoriography,"
to appear
in vol. 11: Historiographieof the Grundrissder romanischenLiteraturendes Mittelalters,ed.
Hans UlrichGumbrecht(forthcoming).Henceforthcited in the text by paragraphnumber.See
also in this regardBenoit Lacroix,L'historienau moyenage (Montreal,1971),especiallych. 2:
"Pourquoiraconter?"
15. Cf. Jauss,"Chansonde gesteet romancourtois,"66; PaulZumthor,Langue,texte,einigme
(Paris, 1975),246ff.;and Alan Knight, TheLate MedievalFrenchDrama:A Theoryof Genres
(Manchester,England,forthcoming),ch. 2.
16. Even with respectto literarygenres the oppositionis far from airtight.In additionto
preservingan awarenessof the past, the epic also providedmodelsfor instruction.See Duggan,
?1.1.5.
17. Ourchoiceof the chronicleas the medievalhistoriographic
genrebest suitedto comparison
with literarytexts will be discussedin V below.
18. These categorylabels are proposedby WilliamBrandt(The Shape of MedievalHistory
[1966][NewYork, 1973]),in preferenceto the morefamiliarif infelicitiousterms"religious"and
"secular."Clericaland aristocraticchroniclesrepresentdistinct"modesof perception,"the latter,
Brandtclaims, being in certainrespectsfurtherremovedfrom our own than the former.
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284
SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
A parentheticalremarkis appropriatehere to obviate a possibleobjection.
The chroniclewas not the only form of medievalhistoriography.There was
also the annals (discussedbelow), which was essentiallya hit-or-misslist of
events orderedchronologically.However,the absenceof any attemptat narrativityin the annals rendersthis form less interestingand less pertinentfor
a comparisonwith fictionaldiscoursethan the chonicle, whichat least aspired
to presenta narrativeaccount.
The prevailingview amonghistoriansof historiography(as represented,for
example,by Barnes"9)
is that both the annalsand the chronicleare "imperfect"
forms of historyin that they lack a narrativedimension.Simplyput, if it fails
to tell a story, it is not properhistory.Eventsin thesetexts are not represented
as havinga coherentstructure,an orderof meaning;they are simplyordered
sequentially.Of the two forms, however,the chronicleis generallyacknowledged to be a "higher"form of historicalrepresentation(cf. Barnes, 65-68).
Departingfrom this view, HaydenWhite arguesthat the chronicleis not a
superioror more sophisticatedrepresentationof realitythan the annals, but
merelya differentkind of representation.To summarizethis argumentbriefly,
the annalsmakesno attemptat narrativitywhilethe chronicle"oftenseemsto
wish to tell a story,"but typicallyfails to do so for lack of narrativeclosure.
The chroniclestartsout to tell a story, but generallybreaksoff in midstream,
somewherein the chronicler'sown present,leavingthingsunfinishedin a storylike way. Thus while the annals representshistory as if real events did not
displaythe form of a story,the chroniclerepresentsit in the form of unfinished
stories.20
White goes on to suggestthat the rise of historicalconsciousness,which is
typicallyparalleledby the growthand developmentof narrativecapability(of
the kindfound in the chronicleas againstthe annals),has to do with the extent
to whichthe culturegroup'slegal or social systemfunctionsas a centerof concern for the purveyors of its history. He associates narrativitywith "the
impulseto moralizereality,"that is, to interpretreal eventsfrom the perspective of the socialsystem,the sourceof any moralityof whichwe mightspeak.21
Onefinalpoint concerningthe formsof medievalhistoriography:it has been
observedthat annalistichistorytypicallydeals in qualitiesratherthan agents.
It figuresa world of accidentsin which things happento people ratherthan
one in which people do things.22The same might be said of many chronistic
19. Harry Elmer Barnes, A History of Historical Writing [1937], 2d. rev. ed. (New York,
1962).
20. White, "The Value of Narrativity," 9, 19f. He also points out (27) that it is the historians
themselves who have elevated narrativity from simply a manner of speaking to a paradigm of the
form in which reality supposedly offers itself to a realistic consciousness. As genres of medieval
historiography, history, annals, and chronicle have of course been distinguished on other criteria
(see Lacroix, 34-40). According to Isidore of Seville only a contemporaneous or eyewitness
account of events qualified as a history; past events were reported in an annals. As he moved back
in time the historian would effectively become an annalist. The chronicle for Isidore was simply
a classification of dates identifiable by the events connected to them (Etymologiae, I, 44).
21. Ibid., 14ff.
22. White, "The Value of Narrativity," 14.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
285
accounts. Villehardouin'schronicleof the Fourth Crusadeand the Conquest
of Constantinople(earlythirteenthcentury)appearsto be constructedaccording to a curioustheory of accidents:the Latin invasion of Constantinopleis
figuredas the consequenceof a seriesof fortuitousevents following upon an
initial misfortune(the failureof many of the Crusadersto reachVenice with
the resultthat the Venetianscould not be paid the money stipulatedto transport the crusadingarmy to the Holy Land).23The Crusadersthemselvesare
depictedless as agentsin a dramaof humaneventsthan as pawnsin a divinely
inspiredplan.
In contrastto this contingentview of historycharacteristicof the annalsand
chronicles,the historiographictraditionof the vernacularepic is characterized
by an "ethicof action":the deeds and decisions of willful heroes and their
adversariesset epic plots in motion. Jauss contrasts this "ethic of action"
informingthe world of the chansonde geste to an "ethicof events"whichinforms the world of chivalricromance,24and which is encapsulatedin the
etymologyof adventure(ad-venire"to come to"), an institutionthat lies at the
heart of the chivalricideology.25In the terminologyof grammar,these two
differentways of configuringevents might be describedas active and passive,
and the participantsin them as agents and patients respectively.
Whilethereareclearlyinsightsto be gainedby comparingthe variousmedieval forms of discoursein light of this distinction,it is questionablethat such
a comparisonwill enhanceby much our understandingof the relationshipof
historyto fiction. Consequentlywe will not pursuethis line of inquiryfurther.
Let us returnnow to the issue of social function, specificallyto the question
which
of a functionaloppositionof the type commemoration-exemplification,
certaintypologistssee as correlatingwith a distinctionbetweenhistoricaland
fictionalgenres.
From a survey of Old French and Middle English chronicles, William
Brandtobservesthat the aim of the aristocraticchroniclerwas not so much
to relateactionsfor theirhistoricalor documentaryinterestas to celebratethe
values implicit in these actions.26Man was considered"teleologically"27-in
23. Thus the characteristic passage: "Ha! cum grant domages fu quant li autre qui alerent as
autres porz ne vindrent illuec! Bien fust la chrestient6 halcie et la terre des Turs abasie!" (Oh how
unfortunate it was that the others who went to other ports did not come there [Venice]. Then
would Christianity have been exalted and the land of the Turks laid low!) Villehardouin, La
Conquete de Constantionople, ed. Edmond Faral, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Paris, 1961), ?57.
24. Jauss, "Chanson de geste et roman courtois," 71f. The ethic of the Chanson de geste ostensibly answers the question What shall I do?, while that of chivalric romance answers the question How should things happen in the world? The particular formulation of the opposition (Ethik
des Handelns vs. Ethik des Geschehens) Jauss draws from Andre Jolles (Einfache Formen, [1930]
2d ed. [Halle, 1956]), though it ultimately goes back to Hegel.
25. On the role of "adventure"in the world of chivalry, see Erich K6hler, L'Aventure chevaleresque (Paris 1974), French translation of Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der hofischen Epik, 2d ed.
(Tiibingen, 1970).
26. Brandt, The Shape of Medieval History, 90. Henceforth cited in the text by page number.
27. "Teleological" in the sense that human actions were represented as necessary pieces in a
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
light of those values which were regarded as a kind of immutable definition
of proper human behavior. Foremost among such values, Brandt contends,
was honor (li1f.).
All manner of actions and events reported in the chronicles, including major
military sacrifices, are described in such a way as to illustrate the preservation
of honor, or its converse, the avoidance of shame. The preeminence of these
considerations for the historiographer is evident if one observes the choice of
details selected for comment. Jordan Fantosme in his late twelfth-century Old
French Chronicleof the War between the English and the Scots tells of a
messenger who comes to admonish King William of Scotland: "If you remain
here much longer a bad song will be sung about you!"28To anyone famililar
with the Song of Roland this warning rings like an echo of the celebrated
French hero's reminder to his men: "Let a bad song not be sung about us,"29
a phrase which epitomizes the overwhelming importance of honor to the ethos
of the shame culture of the epic. Roland's honor and that of his entire lineage
are at stake in the decision whether or not to blow his horn and call for help.
Honor is likewise at the crux of the dramatic (and entirely fictional) episode
of the Old Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid in which the Cid's daughters are assaulted by the counts of Carrion.
Honor for the aristocratic chronicler was the yardstick by which a good man
was measured (Brandt, 112). Thus Jordan Fantosme praises Henry II as:
The most honorableand most victorious
That has been in any land since the time of Moses,
Save only King Charles,whose power was great
Throughthe twelve Peers, Oliverand Roland.
One never heardin fable nor in story
Of a single king of his valor or of his great power.30
This passage is doubly relevant. First, it illustrates clearly the chronicler's
concern with honor, which was seemingly acquired through military accomplishment. It contains, however, something conceivably more interesting for
our purpose. While it is unclear whether Fantosme takes the story of Charlemagne and Roland to be true history or simply legend, what is certain is that
his reference is not to the historical Charles, but to the image of Charlemagne
shaped by the epic songs. These songs were no doubt the main source of information about Charlemagne for the majority of Fantosme's audience, and conceivably his own as well.
divinely conceived design, whose structure was elucidated in retrospect by the historian. The
meaning of each "piece" was determined by the ends of the whole.
28. "Si vus estes plus lunges arest6,/Male chancun serrad de vus chanted"(vv. 731-732),
Chronique de la guerre entre les Anglois et les Ecossois en 1173 et 1174 par Jordan Fantosme,
ed. Richard Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, Rolls Series
82 (London, 1886). Henceforth cited in the text by verse number.
29. "Malvaise cancun de nus chantet ne seit" (v. 1014, reiterated in 1446). La Chanson de
Roland, Oxford version.
30. Fantosme, vv. 112-117. Original given in the Appendix as Text (a).
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Closely associated with honor in the medieval scheme of values was generosity. Chroniclers and entertainers alike depended for their livelihood on the
generosity of royal or noble patrons. Not surprisingly, then, both contrive to
interpolate into their narratives effusive references to the patron's generosity.
Compare in this regard excerpts from two texts, one a fourteenth-century Old
French chonicle written in England on The Life of the Black Prince,3" the
other an anonymous late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century chivalric romance
from the south of France.32
The chronicler begins his account thus:
I wish to make it my study
To compose and recordthe life
Of the most valiant princeof the world,
And when one searchesthe globe,
Therewas never such a one since the time of Claris,
Julius Caesarand Arthur
As you can hear [emphasisadded]33
Further on he writes of the Black Prince during his residence as Lord of
Gascony:
In Gasconyhe reignedfor seven years
In Joy, in peace and in delightIn this I do not lie to youFor all the princesand the barons
From all the surroundinglands
Came to him to do homage;
A good seigneur,loyal and wise
They held him, with one accord
And, if I may say so, properly,
For, since the time when God was born,
Therewere not held such beautifulentertainments
As he made, nor more honorable
Becauseevery day he had at his table
More than eighty knights
And at least four times as many squires.
Therethey had jousts and pageants[or feasts]
In Angoulemeand Bordeaux;
There dwelt all nobleness,
All joy and all delight
Largesse,gentlenessand honor,
And he was loved with a good love
By all his subjectsand all his men,
Becausehe did for them much that was good.
Much they esteemedhim and loved him,
Those who dwelt with him,
31. Life of the Black Prince by the Heraldof Sir John Chandos,ed. and transl. MildredK.
Pope and EleanorC. Lodge (Oxford, 1910).
32. Jaufre, in Les Troubadours,II, ed. Ren6Lavaudand Ren6Nelli (Bruges,1960).
33. Life of theBlackPrince,vv. 47-53. I followthe editors'emendedtext [(b)in the Appendix]
and Brandt'stranslation(88).
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
For largessesustainedhim
And noblenessgovernedhim,
Discretion,temperanceand rectitude,
Reason and justice and moderation:
One could say with reason
That such a princecould not be found,
If one were to searchall the world.34
Compare this chronicle excerpt with the following passage from the narrator's prologue to the romance of Jaufre:
And he who set this tale to rhyme,
neverhimself saw King Arthur,
but simplyheardit told
at the court of the most honoredking
that ever was by any standard,
that is the king of Aragon [probablyAlfonso II
(1152-1196)],
Sire of Noble Worth and son of Generosity,
Lord of FortuitousAdventure,
humbleand faithful by nature.
He loves, fears, and believesin God.
He preservesLoyaltyand Faith,
Peace and Justice, whencethe Lord
has bestowedupon him His love, for he sustains
his followers,
Never has God found in him a fault....
Thus has He honoredhim
by exaltinghim above all others
in noble worth and naturalintelligence,
in spiritualstrengthand in courage.
Never in a monarchcrownedso young
were so many noble qualitiescombined.
For he willinglybestowsgenerousgifts
on jongleursand on knights.
Whenceare gatheredat his court
all the valiant who are held in high esteem.
The anonymous poet concludes his panegyric introduction with the conventional disclosure of sources:
He who set this song to rhyme
heardrecountedat the King'scourt,
by a knight from far-off lands,
a relativeof Arthur'sand Gawain,
this adventurewhich happenedone day
to King Arthur, holding full court,
at Pentecost.35
Chivalric narrative abounds in such encomia to contemporaneous historical
34. Ibid., vv. 1600-1631.[(c) in the Appendix],translationfrom Brandt(128f.).
35. Jaufre, vv. 56-91 [(d) in the Appendix],translationand emphasismine.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
289
figures,36skillfully woven into stories about distant and fabulous realms,
typically through comparisonwith the generosityof Arthur. Arthur representedfor romancewhat Charlemagnewas for the epic: an ideal of sovereignty, embodyingevery aristocraticvirtue in the highest degree.
Noteworthyalso with regardto the question of history vs. fiction is King
Arthur'sapparentcredibility,as documentedin both texts above. While the
chroniclerpoints to him as a standard of comparison for contemporary
monarchs,the romancepoet invokes- or invents- a cousin to Arthurto buttressthe authorityof his tale. This rhetoricalstrategyis not uncommonin our
texts. In a versionof the Chevalierau cygne,an epic of the Old FrenchWilliam
cycle, the singerhopes to enhancesimilarlythe verisimilitudeof his narrative
by tracingit back to the locus of events whereit was committedto writing,
he claims,by none otherthan Orable-a paganprincess,the creationof some
earlierinspiredpoet, weddedhenceforthto Williamof Orange.37
It is clear from examplessuch as these how, in their desireto endow their
narrativeswith a sense of historicalveracity,medievalpoets often blurredthe
line of demarcationbetweenhistoryand legend.Yet the evidencesuggeststhat
the jongleursand their audiences,popular and learnedalike, generallyconsideredthese worksto be accuraterepresentationsof historicalfact (Duggan,
?4.0).
One last illustration of the proximity of medieval history to medieval
romancewith respectto the exemplaryfunctioninvolveswhat was referredto
above as the teleologicalview of human actions that pervadeschroniclehistory. In thesetextsthe "factsof history"arecharacteristically
presentedas subordinateto a highertruth, which, like the senses moralisof romance,must be
interpretedby the consumer.Eventsare spelledout not for their intrinsichistorical value, but in a way that makes them intelligibleas a variationon a
paradigmaticstory, a repetition of a mythic- or, for the Middle Ages
particularly,scriptural- intertext. Typically, whateverpolitical or religious
enterprisethe writeris seekingto justify will be figuredas an implementation
of the divine will. Thus does Villehardouin, for example, construct the
scenarioof the Fourth Crusade.The significanceof an event lies preciselyin
demonstrating"how it instantiatesin the presentthe patternof human agon
and divine intentionof an authoritativeevent of mythic significance."38
36. Among many, cf. Chretien de Troye's address to Philip of Flanders in the Conte du graal
(Perceval), also the address by the early thirteenth-century Catalan troubadour Ramon Vidal to
Alfonso VIII of Castile in the courtly fabliau of the Castia-gilos. These threads connecting the
text to the "real world" are often crucial for dating.
37. La Naissance du chevalier au cygne, ed. Jan A. Nelson, vol. I of The Old French Crusade
Cycle, ed. Jan A. Nelson and Emanuel J. Mickel (University, Alabama, 1977), vv. 17-19, 21:
Ainsi vous dirai canyon qui n'est mie corsable,/Car ele est en l'estore, c'est cose veritable./En escrit
le fist mettre la bone dame Orable . . ./Dedens les murs d'Orenge la fort cite mirable.
38. Stephen G. Nichols, "A King among his Sons: Theosis as Troping in the Chronicles of
William of Normandy" (Dartmouth College, unpublished ms.), 2. Henceforth cited in the text by
ms. page number. He observes further that the modern reader, whose expectations of historiog-
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
Nichols gives an incisive demonstrationof the operation of this type of
figurative historical representationin three eleventh- and twelfth-century
accounts of the life of William of Normandy:the EcclesiasticalHistory of
Orderic Vitalis, William of Poitier's Gesta Guilelmi, and the Carmen de
HastingaeProelio, generallyattributedto Guy of Amiens.39All threeof these
seek in not dissimilarways to representhistoryas "a figurativeordertroping
divine intentionality."The rhetorical strategies governing this troping of
history-metaphor/metonymyin broad terms (specificallyzeugma, catachresis, and hypallage)-Nichols sees as derivingnaturallyfrom the problemat
issue: the translation
of the Englishthrone. Despitedifferencesof purposeand
situation, all of these historians,in common with the practiceof their time,
"structuremeaningin such a way as to make the discoursean interpretation,
a directedvision or readingdeterminedin advanceof the actants and their
deeds"(9, emphasisadded). Each representsWilliam'sstory not as a progression of history,but as a dialecticbetweenorderand chaos. Thesenses historicus is "rewritten"-or perhaps simply written40 -tropologically
in terms of a
dialecticof salvation in which the historicalagents- here Williamthe Conquerorand Harold the Saxon- are cast as positive and negativeimages of a
divinelyinspiredideal.
Chronisticnarrative,to the extent that it is "narrative,"representshistory
tropicallyas repetition,as "thecontinuousreinscribingof a paradigmaticstory
to demonstratethe continuedvalidity, the power of the Mythicword on the
here and now" (Nichols, 3).
To sum up our findingswith respectto social function, it appearsthat the
raphy are that it "reconstruct history as event unique-au-monde," is often frustrated by this type
of historical discourse, which seeks rather to minimize the uniqueness of a given event, and which
locates coherence not in the event per se, but in its relationship to the intertext. The validity of
this characterization of medieval historiography is undeniable, yet it perhaps overstates the case
for the modern departure from it. As Northrop Frye suggests, we see the "point" of a story when
we have identified its theme (dianoia), which makes of it a parable or illustrated fable (Anatomy
of Criticism [Princeton, 1957]). This would apply to historical narrative as well as to fiction.
39. RalphDavis, "TheCarmende HastingaeProelio,"EnglishHistoricalReview93 (1978),
241-261, argues that the surviving text of the Carmen must be later than Guy of Amiens (died
1074 or 1075), in part because of its historical inaccuracy ("The Carmen is above all a literary piece
written by a man who had no special information, who knew the names of very few of the individuals involved in his story, and equally few places . . ." 256). While the poem may well date
only from the twelfth century, as Davis suggests, the fallacy of a line of argument that presumes
an inverse relationship between historical accuracy and distance from the event will be demonstrated here.
40. As Hayden White points out, the distinction, implicit in most discussions of historical discourse, between the facts (data or information) on the one hand, and on the other the interpretation (explanation or story told about the facts), only serves to obscure the difficulty of discriminating within the discourse between these two levels ("Historicism, History, and the Imagination,"
107). A more useful contrast might be formulated in terms of the distinction introduced by generative grammar between "deep" and "surface" levels. The facts together with their interpretation
appear as the surface representation, subjacent to which is a primordial story-type along the lines
of Northrop Frye's mythoi. We understand the specific story being told about the facts when we
identify the generic story-type of which the particular story is an instantiation (ibid., 110).
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
291
typological matrix proposed above - or any other analogous typology based
on function - while undoubtedly useful for classifying literary or dramatic
genres, turns out to be of limited value for the purpose of dividing medieval
discourse into the historical and the fictional. Such overlapping functions as
commemoration, edification, and especially exemplification and panegyric are
discernible across the board in the texts examined, whether these purport to
be historical or simply imaginative.
VI.
NARRATIVE SYNTAX
A fifth angle from which to approach the problems of history vs. fiction in the
Middle Ages involves the structure or narrative syntax of the discourse. How
are events related to one another? Are they merely juxtaposed paratactically
according to a rudimentary linear chronology, or are they subordinated so that
causality is made explicit?
Looking first at the so-called historical genres, we find in the annals no suggestion whatsoever of logical connections between events. To take an often
cited example from the Annals of St. Gall, a catalogue of events that occurred
in Gaul from the eighth through the tenth centuries, observe the entries for the
years 709 through 734:41
709.
710.
711.
712.
713.
714.
715.
716.
717.
718.
719.
720.
721.
722.
723.
724.
725.
726.
727.
728.
729.
730.
Hard winter. Duke Gottfried died.
Hard year and deficient in crops.
Flood everywhere.
Pippin, Mayor of Palace, died.
Charles [Martel] devastated Saxony with great destruction.
Charles fought against the Saxons.
Theudo drove the Saracens out of Aquitaine.
Great crops.
Sarcens came for the first time.
41. Annales SangallensesMaiores, dicti Hepidanni,ed. Idelfonsusab Arx, in Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, series Scriptores, ed. G. H. Pertz (Hanover, 1826), I, 73. Referred to by
C. H. Haskins,TheRenaissanceof the TwelfthCentury(Cambridge,Mass., 1927),231; Barnes,
65; White, "The Value of Narrativity," 11. Original Latin text given as (e) in the Appendix. Composite translation.
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
731. Blessed Bede, the presbyter, died.
732. Charles fought against the Saracens at Poitiers on Saturday.
733.
734.
Startling,no doubt, for the modernreaderis the ellipticalnatureof this historicalrecord:somethingworthyof note musthave occurredbetween715 and
717 or from 726 to 730. Curiousalso is the seeminglyidiosyncraticchoice of
events that are recorded,which leads one to speculateabout the importance
of eventsobviouslyomitted. As Haskinspointedout, in the entryfor the year
732 thereis no mentionof the battleof Tours,one of the decisivemilitaryconflictsof history.The entryfor 732 is furtherdisconcertingin that the obviously
crucial information-who won the battle-is missing. Necessary "presupposed"informationis also missing:"Saturday"is meaninglessin the absence
of a calendricalreferencepoint.
Whilethe chroniclesgenerallyhave a temporaldeicticcenter(a date indicating when events were recorded)as well as a "signature"establishingpersonal
deixis (the narratingego usuallyhas a name, and often more [seeunderVII]),
the annalshave neither.And the lack of these diacriticsis often distressingto
the modernreader.The entryfor 725 (Saracenscame for the firsttime) implies
that this eventwas recordedsome time afterthey had come again(onceor posaiblymore).42Yet nowherefurtheralong is there mentionof any subsequent
"coming(s),"nor is there any deictic anchor point from which to establish
temporalperspective:we do not know when the annals were recorded.
The annals,then, displaya veryrudimentaryparatacticstructure,filledwith
apparentgaps and discontinuities,and organizedsolely accordingto the principle of chronology.43
With respectto the narrativesyntaxof chronicles,opinionsdivergeslightly.
Brandt contends that in the texts of his corpus, events are simply laid out
seriatim,withoutexplicitrelationships,or else conjoinedby the minimalconnectives "and"and "then."They are characteristicallynonexplanatory(86).
Similarlynonexplanatoryand paratacticis epic discourse-as Auerbachin his
classic essay on Roland was the first to point out44-in contrastto romance,
wherecausalityand "focus"(the foregroundingand backgroundingof events)
are expressedthroughexplicit narrativesubordination.
This opposition, of course, goes back to Aristotle,who definedhistoryand
poetryantithetically:poetryis unified,intelligible,and basedon propersubordinationof the part to the ends of the whole, whereashistoryknows only the
42. White, "The Value of Narrativity," 12.
43. William of Malmesbury observed: "Annalium enim conscriptiones non qualia optant ipsi
[historiographers], sed qualia ministrant tempora, mandari solent litteris, ex officio" (Historia
rerum .. ., 23, preface, in Patrologia cursus completus, series latina, ed. J. P. Migne [Paris, 18841902], 201:890).
44. Erich Auerbach, "Roland Against Ganelon," Mimesis [1946] transl. W. Trask (Princeton,
1953). The parataxis of epic discourse at its various levels is analyzed by Jean Rychner, La
Chansonde geste: Essai sur Partpique des jongleurs(Geneva,1955),esp. ch. 3 and 4.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
293
paratactic organization of contiguity or succession. We also know that
Aristotle took a ratherdim view of history, which he found not to be intelligible in the same way as the plot of a play.45
At the opposite end of the spectrumfrom Aristotleare contemporarydiscourse analysts such as Hayden White, who insist on the essentiallyfictive
natureof all historythat is properlynarrative.Histories,White argues,gain
part of theirexplanatoryeffectby their successin "makingstoriesout of mere
chronicles"throughthe operationof "emplotment."By emplotmenthe intends
the encodingof the historicalfacts of the chronicleas componentsof specific
kindsof plot structuresin the way NorthropFryehas suggestedis the case with
fictionsin general.46Consideredas potentialelementsof a story, the raw data
of history are value-neutral.Whetherthey find their place in a story that is
tragic, comic, ironic, or romantic-taking Frye'scategories-depends on the
historian'sdecision to configurethem accordingto one plot structurerather
than another. Most historicalsequencesmay be emplotted in a numberof
differentways so as to providedifferentinterpretationsof the events(cf. note
40) and endow them with differentmeanings.47
The validity of this view-even for chroniclehistory which aspiresto but
fails to achievefull narrativity-may be shownby comparisonof two accounts
of the Fourth Crusade,by Geoffroyde Villehardouinand Robert of Clari.48
While Robert is attentive to personal feats of valor-notably his ownVillehardouinsubordinatesindividualaccomplishmentsto broadpoliticaland
militaryobjectives.EvidentthroughoutVillehardouin'schronicleis a desireto
rationalizethe diversionof the Fourth Crusadefrom Jerusalemto Constantinopleand to justify the conflictbetweenthe ChristianWesternand Christian
EasternEmpires.To this end events are configuredaccordingto a particular
theory of accidents(noted above). This is not to implythat his contemporary
Robert of Clari could not see the forest for the trees; he was simply more
attunedto describingtrees, as it were.
How eventsare to be configuredthus dependsultimatelyon the historian's
subtletyin matchingthem up with specificplot structuresso as to endowthem
with particularmeanings.And this, Whiteinsists, is essentiallya literary,that
is to say, a fiction-makingoperation.The accountsof the life of Williamof
Normandycited above illustratethis quite nicely.
It shouldbe kept in mindthat this view of historyassumeshistoricalwriting
45. For Aristotle, then, the distinction between history and poetry is in some measure purely
formal; the operative character of the narrative is not whether it is fact or fiction, but rather its
structural unity or unifying power (Gossman, 9f.).
46. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, esp. the chapter on "Theory of Myths."
47. White, "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact," 83f., Metahistory 7-11. Ricoeur similarly
finds historians in general guilty of underplaying the "configurational" aspect of narrative while
emphasizing the "sequential"aspect; literary analysts, on the other hand, are guilty of the opposite
sin: "L'enjeu commun a la theorie de l'histoire et la theorie du recit fictif est la connection entre
figure et sequence." "Le recit de fiction" in La Narrativiti, 28.
48. Both texts appearin Historienset chroniqueursdu moyenage (Robertde Clari, Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Commynes), ed. Albert Pauphilet (Paris, 1952).
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
that is properlynarrative,thus excludingthat portion of medievalhistoriographyrepresentedby the annals and also the clericalchronicles.These latter
werenot narrativeat all, accordingto Brandt(86f.), but simplycollectionsof
incidentsand events. Like the annalists,the clericalchroniclersgenerallydid
not perceivein these events a basic continuityof action, nor sets of relationships which they could be shown to figure. While the aristocraticchronicles
come closer in this regardto modernhistoricalnarrative,it is to the popular
historiographyof the medievalperiod-the vernacularepic-that we would
turn for the most strikingexamplesof the fictionalemplotmentof historical
material.
In a rigorouslydocumentedstudyof the role of historyin the Romanceepic,
Joseph Duggandeconstructs,as it were, the emplotmentprocessby isolating
the specificoperationsthroughwhich historicalelementsare appropriatedby
the epic genre and fitted into its particularsystem.49This fictionalization
processhas long been acknowledgedin theory, even if in practiceawareness
of it has often failed to manifestitself in the work of those literaryhistorians
intent on demonstratingthe epic's fundamentalhistoricity. In the hands of
epic poets historicalfiguresare altered,accordingto a numberof identifiable
operations, to fit the limited typology of epic roles. Historical events are
similarlyreshapedto conform to prevailingideologiesand accommodatethe
demandsof epic plots. Among thirteensuch operationsof "epictransfer"pinpointed by Duggan, we find, for example:the splittingof a single historical
figureinto severalepic characters(the historicalGiraldusof Provencebecomes
variouslyGirartde Fraite, Girartde Vienne,and Girartde Rousillon);conflation of the deeds or attributesof historicalfigureswho sharethe same name
(the CharlesMartelof Girartde Rousillon is thus blendedwith Charlesthe
Bald);the attachingof historicalnamesto unhistoricalevents(the well known
"afrentade Corpes"in whichthe Cid'sdaughtersare abusedby theirnew husthe assigningof unauthenticmeetingsto hisbands, the counts of Carrion50;
torical contemporaries(Raoul de Cambrai'skilling of Bernart de Retest
[Bernardusof Porcien]);the deliberatecover-upof historicalkinshiprelations
(Williamof Toulouse being a cousin to Charlesthe Great, or the Cid's wife
Ximenato KingAlfonso) or of an historicalfigure'ssocial role (the episcopal
office of Wanilo, one of the protoypesfor the traitor Ganelon).
A classic exampleof this poetic manipulationof history is from the Song
of Roland, one of a numberof chansonsde gestewhichreceiveda new impetus
49. Duggan, "Appropriation of Historical Knowledge." A number of examples are drawn from
this study. Cf. also Menendez Pidal's statement: "En suma, todos los elementos hist6ricos no se
hallan en un poema primitive encuanto hist6ricos, sino encuanto sirven a una ficci6n poetica"
("Poesia e historia en el Mio Cid: el problema de la poesia 6pica," Nueva Revista de Filologia
Espaflola 3 [1949], 113-129; reprinted in De primitive ifrica espaniola y antigua eipica [Buenos
Aires, 1951], 9-33).
50. Purely the creation of a poetic imagination, this episode of the Cid legend was subsequently
elaborated and incorporated into several historical chronicles. For a comparison of the poetic text
with the various chronistic versions, see D. G. Pattison, "The 'Afrenta de Corpes' in FourteenthCentury Historiography" in "Mio Cid" Studies, ed. A. D. Deyermond (London, 1977), 129-140.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
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from the Crusadingmovement.By the time of the Oxford version (ca. 1100)
the band of Christian"Wascones"(eitherBasquesor Gascons)whom the historicalCharles'sarmyencounteredat Roncevauxhas beenconverted,poetically and otherwise,into a horde of valiant but misguidedpagans. Moreover,
thereis no reasonto believethat the defeat of Charlemagne'srearguardwas
in any way linked to acts of treacheryor cowardice.But epic songs are not
sung about sloppy fighting;they are sung about heroes and traitors.
In short, the epic shapesits own systemof relationshipswith standardcomponents,whichthe data of historymustbe tailoredto fit. And, as Dugganhas
observed,these distortionsof history are ultimatelymore illuminatingfor a
historyof mentalitiesthan the mere-reflectionof historyin the poems (?2.0).
If we attemptnow to drawup a balancesheet for narrativesyntaxas a distinctivefeatureof the contrastbetweenhistoricaland fictionaldiscourse,we
find that the watershave now become only more muddied.For if on the one
hand the factor of parataxiswould suggest placing epics together with the
annals and certain chroniclesunder an umbrellaof history, in contrast to
romance, whose subordinatingstructuremarks it as fictional, the factor of
emplotmenton the other hand shifts epic back into the camp of the fictional
genres, and, as some would have it, of all properlynarrativehistory as well.
VII.
NARRATOR INVOLVEMENT
A final perspectivefrom which to explorethe relationshipof history and fiction in the Middle Ages concerns the apparentpresenceor absence in the
accountof a narratingego. What sort of distancedoes the narratorset up betweenhimselfand the eventshe relates?Does he intervenein the narrative,or
is he effaced?Does he displaysignsof self-consciousness?To whatextentdoes
he function as an interpreter,mediatingbetweenhis text and its consumers?
These questionswill be grouped together under the heading of narratorinvolvement.
It is generallyacknowledgedthat the distancingirony whichhas come to be
regardedas a hallmarkof medievalromanceis absentfrom medievalepic. In
the chanson de geste poets strive to minimizedistance:Charlemagneis described as nostre emperere;the present tense abounds. The medieval epic
singerin effectdisappearsbehindhis narrative,whose meaningis straightforward,immediatelyaccessible,and generallyunambiguous:Christiansare right
and pagans are wrong.5'Epic narrationin general,as Grimmand Hegel had
observed, gives the impressionof singing itself, autonomously,without an
author'sguidinghand.52
By contrast,the writerof romanceassertshis personacontinually,not only
throughthe conventionaltechniquesof interjectioex persona auctoris-affir51. Cf. Roland, v. 1015: "Paien unt tort e chrestien unt dreit," also 1212: "Nos avum dreit mais
cist glutun unt tort."
52. Jauss, "Chanson de geste et roman courtois," 74.
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
296
mations of the truth of the tale or of personal participation in the hero's lot,
proleptic references to future events, and so on, all of which also find their
place in epic and the chronicles -but also, and more important, he makes his
presence felt by monitoring the reader's reactions through his constant interpretation of the meaning of the story, the senses morals. Thus Chretien de
Troyes uses King Arthur's knights as a vehicle to speak directly to his audience:
this is how knights and ladies behaved in the good old days when people knew
how to love and knew how to fight!
If we take narrative distance to be a mark of fictional discourse or "the discourse of the imaginary" and narrative immediacy to be a mark of historical
discourse or "the discourse of the real," then we might expect the chronicles
to resemble epics in this regard, and many in effect do. Comparing Jordan
Fantosme's account of the Scottish siege of Carlisle to a prototypical epic battle scene, we may have difficulty deciding which is from the pen of the
chronicler and which from the mouth of the jongleur, despite obvious differences in compositional technique. Fantosme reports:
Greatwas the noise at the beginningof the fight.
The irons resoundand the steels grate.
Hardlyany hauberksor helmetsremainedintact.
That day those within were knights:
With their swordsthey cause many shieldsto be pierced,
A good numberof them they leave scatteredalong the walls,
Who had no leisureto get up again.
From now on it belongsto those inside to help,
To endurebattle and to breakthe shields,
To keep and to protecttheir barbican.
Now no cowardwould be of use.
At the gate there was a great crowd:
On both sides was great fury.
You could have seen there many bloody knights,
Many good vassals in bad luck.
The swordsresoundand are thrusteverywhere.
Robertof Vaus defendedhimselfvigorously,
The son of Odartwas in no way behindhim.
For his lord he daredgreat boldness
To resist so many peopleForty thousand, as Fantosme does not lie.53
The immediacy of Fantosme's blow-by-blow account approximates what has
been described as the "sportscasting" style of the chanson de geste. Compare
then the above description of the melee at Carlisle with the following representative battle laisses from Roland:
109
In the meantime, the fighting grew bitter.
Franksand pagans, the fearful blows they strike53. Chronique,vv. 648-668. Originaltext given as (f) in The Appendix.Translationfrom
Brandt,120.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
297
those who attack, those who defend themselves;
so many lances broken, runningwith blood,
the gonfanonsin shreds,the ensignstorn,
so many good Frenchfallen, their young lives lost:
they will not see their mothersor wives again,
or the men of Francewho wait for them at the passes.
110
The battle is fearful and full of grief.
Oliverand Roland strikelike good men,
the Archbishop,more than a thousandblows,
and the TwelvePeers do not hang back, they strike!
the Frenchfight side by side, all as one man.
The pagansdie by hundreds,by thousands:
whoeverdoes not flee finds no refuge from death,
like it or not, there he ends all his days.
And there the men of Francelose their greatestarms;
they will not see their fathers, their kin again,
or Charlemagne,who looks for them in the passes.
253
The men of Franceand Araby strikehard,
these wooden shafts, these burnishedlances shatter.
Whoeverthen had seen these shieldsin pieces,
heardthe ringingof hauberksshiningwhite,
the gratingof these swordsupon these helms;
whoeverthen had seen these warriorsfalling,
and men roaringand dying on the ground,
would always keep the memoryof pain.
It is a battle, and very hard to bear.54
With respect to narrative distance, the chronicles, it turns out, show affinities to both epic and romance. Not unexpectedly we find little trace of the narrating persona in the clerical texts nor in certain aristocratic accounts.
The founder of Spanish historiography, Alfonso el Sabio, seeks to project
the image of a conscientious and dispassionate recorder of events, whose personal intervention is confined to occasional judgments on the relative merits
of conflicting sources (see under IX below). But the very act of making these
judgments implies a measure of self-consciousness and distance from the
material. Similarly effaced is Villehardouin, whose lucid and orderly account
of the Fourth Crusade, virtually devoid of emotion and picturesque detail,
contrasts sharply with Robert of Clari's description of the same events. In
effect, given the limited historical value of Robert's rather biased reporting, the
attraction of his chronicle for the modern reader lies principally in his vivid
personal reactions to events in which he took part, and the almost childlike
wonder with which he depicts the splendors of the Orient.55
54. La Chansonde Roland,ed. CesareSegre(Milan,1971),laisses109, 110,252, givenas Text
(g) in the Appendix.Translationby FrederickGoldin, The Song of Roland (New York, 1978),
based on Segre'sedition. Note: Goldin'slaisse 253 = Segre's252.
55. The"child-mindedness"
of medievalhistoricalwritinghas beenviewedwitha certainpatron-
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
The salientlack of distancethat we find in Robertof Clari'saccount, however, is far from the rule among aristocraticchroniclers.The genre abounds
with examplesof self-consciousstorytellerssuch as Alfonso, or the French
monk Richerof Reims, who on the eve of the millennium(ca. 998) took it
upon himself "to preservein writing"the "wars,""troubles,"and "affairs"of
the French,and moreover,to set them down in a mannersuperiorto that of
other accounts,notablythat of one Flodoard,an earlierclericof Reims, who
had compiled an annals on which Richer drew for information. While
acknowledginghis debt to Flodoard, Richer stresseshis departurefrom the
model, insistingthat he has often "put other words"in place of the original
In addition, the
ones and "modifiedcompletelythe style of presentation."56
privilegedvantagepoint from whichhe has observedcontemporaryeventswill
undoubtedlyassurethe superiorityof his account. His consciousnessof himself as a writerworkingwithinan establishedhistoriographictraditionis also
suggestedby his referencesto such authoritativewriterson the early history
of Gaul as Caesar,Orosius, Jerome, and Isidore. All of this, White suggests
(21), points to a certaindistancefrom his own discourse.Examplesof ironic
distancearealso not hardto come by in the aristocraticchronicles,particularly
those-like the Song of Hastings, referredto above-which emplot human
history as a figurativeillustrationof the workingout of a divine plan.
VIII.
DRAWING THE BALANCE SHEET
We now have an overviewof six, to a degreeoverlapping,parameterswhich
mightbe used to explorethe limits of a distinctionbetweenhistoryand fiction
in the MiddleAges. In abbreviatedform these are: authenticity,intent, reception, social function, narrativesyntax, and narratorinvolvement.
Among these, the issue of historicalauthenticityhas long been a cherished
obsessionof literaryhistorians,dominatingepic scholarshipuntil at least the
mid 1950s. By now the correlationswith and departuresfrom the historical
record(suchas we have it) have in largemeasurebeen established.But for all
its intrinsicvalue, this knowledgeis of lesser interestto the question posed
here- thoughit providesa necessarygroundwork- than informationconcerning intent and reception,specificallywriters'claimsof historicalauthenticity,
and the influenceof purportedlyhistoricalliteratureon societyand on history
izing indulgence by later historians, as the following representative comment suggests: "The medieval historian as compared with the ancient and modern has the child's keen interest in men and
things, the child's directness of observation and picturesqueness of expression and often just that
little point of naive malice which lends such charm to a child's report of what he has seen and
heard. But his calculations of numbers, for instance, can scarcely be trusted and great allowance
must be made for his professional or religious bias." (George Gordon Coulton, "Historiography"
in The Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. Cited by Barnes, 56.)
56. Richer, Histoire de France 888-995, ed. and transl. Robert Latouche, 2 vols. (Paris, 19301937), I:4, given as Text (h) in the Appendix. Cited by White, "The Value of Narrativity," 20ff.,
whose translations I follow.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
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itself. The remainderof our discussionwill thereforeconcentrateon these two
parameters.
IX.
INTENT AND RECEPTION: THE TESTIMONY OF THE TEXTS
Whatkindsof evidencedo we have that historyand fictionwereconceptually
distinct?One valuablepiece of testimonyis found in the often cited Prologue
to Jean Bodel'sSong of the Saxons, a twelfth-centurychansonde geste of the
Charlemagnecycle, which contains no doubt one of the earliestvernacular
attemptsat literarytypology: Bodel characterizesthe matierede Bretagneas
"frivolousand amusing,"the matierede Rome as "a sourceof wisdom,"and
the matierede France- the epic- as "true."57
Translatedinto functionalterms,
Arthurian romance representedentertainment,the romances of antiquity
edification,and the chansonde geste history.As a purveyorof epic song, Jean
Bodelwouldprobablyhaveconsideredhimselfan "historian."Let us therefore
comparehis views with those of a more officialhistorian,Alfonso el Sabio of
Castile,who inauguratedthe Spanishhistoriographic
traditionin the thirteenth
century with his Primera Crdnica General and monumental but never
completedGeneralEstoria.58
Eclecticwith respectto sources, Alfonso was not the first historianto give
credenceto the epic songs, but he used them more extensivelythan any of his
predecessors.Accordingto MenendezPidal, he incorporatesfourteen epics
into the PrimeraCronica,findingin them a valuablesupplementto the more
laconicchronicletradition.But whenthe poems conflictedwith more authoritative writtenmaterial,Alfonso did not hesitateto devaluethem as historical
documents.Thusat a point in the narrationof Charlemagne'sexpeditionsinto
Spain, the chroniclereads:
Therearethosewho say in theirepic songsthat Charlesconqueredmanycitiesin Spain
57. Les Saisnes, ed. Francisque Michel, 2 vols. [1839] (Geneva, 1969), vv. 6-11:
N'en sont que trois materes a nul home entendant:
De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant;
Ne de ces trois materes n'i a nul semblant.
Li conte de Bretaigne s'il sont vain et plaisant,
Cil de France sont voir chascun jour aparant,
Cil de Rome sont sage et de sen aprenant.
58. It is simply for convenience that we refer to Alfonso as the "author" of the chronicles
that have come to be associated with his name. These accounts presumably reflect the collective
effort of a school of historiographers which began under Alfonso and continued their work during
the reign of his successor Sancho IV. On the historiographic methodology of the Alfonsine school
see Gonzalo Menendez Pidal, "Como trabajaron las escuelas alfonsies," Nueva Revista de
Filologia Hispdnica 5 (1951), 373-380; also Diego Catalan, De Alfonso X al Conde de Barcelos.
Cuatro estudios sobre el nacimiento de la historiograffa romance en Castilla y Portugal (Madrid,
1962), and "El taller historiogrdfico alfonsi: metodos y problemas en el trabajo compilatorio,"
Romania 84 (1963), 354-375; Samuel A. Armistead, "New Perspectives in Alfonsine Historiography," Romance Philology 20 (1966), 204-217. In a forthcoming book on legend and history
in early medieval Spain, D. G. Pattison argues for the chronicles being the best "prose literature"
of the period on the Peninsula.
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and many castles, and that he fought many battleswith the Arabsand openedup the
road from Germanyto Santiago.But in truththis could not be . . . [herehe proceeds
to offera preferableaccount].Thereforeone ought to believewhat appearsin writing
as logical and reasonable[in this case probablythe account of the twelfth-century
Historia Silense]and not the tales of those who tell about what they do not know.59
While Alfonso's sense of historical discrimination appears highly developed
for his time, it does not preclude admitting into his chronicle entire passages
which are obviously the invention of jongleurs. An ironic case in point:
immediately following the passage cited above in which Alfonso seeks to demonstrate his critical acumen as an historian, there comes the story of Mainet,
a purely fanciful eponymous legend about Charlemagne's youthful exploits in
the service of the Moorish king of Toledo.60
I invoke the testimony of these two individuals-the one, Jean Bodel, a
composer of what we would call fiction, the other, Alfonso, a recorder of socalled history-as evidence for the claim that a distinction did exist in the
minds of medieval text producers and their publics between historical and
fictional discourse. But it should be apparent that this distinction cuts across
different lines from our own.
In Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, W. B. Gallie formulates
as follows the relationship of history to fiction: an historical narrative makes
events intelligible by unfolding the story that connects their significance, and
as such does not differ from fiction insofar as it depends on and develops our
skill and subtlety in following stories. History does differ from fiction insofar
as it must rest on evidence of the occurrence in real space and time of what
it describes, and insofar as it must grow out of a critical assessment of the received materials of history, including the analyses and interpretations of other
historians.6' I will take the liberty of assuming the reader's tacit concurrence
with this formulation.
Adopting then as our criteria for historical discourse (1) an acceptable level
of accuracy with regard to the information, and (2) the assumption of a critical
scrutiny of source materials, we find ourselves already at some distance from
the medieval concept of history pieced together from the testimony of our
texts.
Admittedly, Alfonso attempts to evaluate his sources, but his criteria for so
doing seem rather arbitrary.62The accounts he admits into his chronicle are
59. Alfonso el Sabio, Primera Cr6nica General o sea Estoria de Espafia que mand6 composer
Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289, ed. Ram6n Menendez Pidal (Madrid,
1955), 355b:48-49, 356a:1-5, 356b:22-25 (Chapter 623). Given as Text (i) in the Appendix.
60. Duggan, ?4.3
61. W. B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London, 1964), cited by Louis
0. Mink, "History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension," New Literary History 1 (1970), 541548, reprinted in New Directions in Literary History, ed. Ralph Cohen (Baltimore, 1974), 111.
62. On medieval historians' efforts to evaluate their sources, see Lacroix, 69ff. Of the trilogy
of sources from which they drew material - visual, oral, written - Lacroix finds the most "critical"
attitude toward the oral tradition. He cites various analogues to our example from Alfonso.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
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often as far removed from the "the facts" as those he rejects. Moreover, in the
case of Alfonso and of most medieval chroniclers, the determining criterion
for what to include and what to omit was not so much a desire for objective
and comprehensive reporting, but rather the function of the work-typically
propaganda and/or panegyric -coupled with what Brandt calls "the principle
of interest," that is, telling a good story.
With regard to the criterion of accuracy, the epic poets would regularly
invoke authoritative sources for their tales to bolster the impression of verisimilitude. These were typically monastic centers or churches (St. Denis, Aixla-Chapelle), contemporaries of the events or even purported eyewitnessesincluding the writer himself-and, notably, written documents.63 Documents
provided the most impressive stamp of authenticity for the overwhelmingly
illiterate audiences to whom the jongleurs' work was directed. Their desire for
historical truth, but at the same time their curious - to us - conception of what
that is, came across strikingly in the examples cited above of poets who, unwittingly it appears, invoke fictional characters as guarantors of the truth of
their tales. Even when they did not appeal to witnesses or documents, the jongleurs would often insist on the veracity of their own versions of tales in contrast to those of their rivals, which invariably were seen as suffering from
egregious historical inaccuracies.
Analogous evidence of historical purport is found frequently in the later historical drama. Thus the sixteenth-century religious polemicist Theodore de
Beze closes his play on The Sacrifice of Abraham with the following appeal:
I beg of you that when you leave here
The memoryof this true and worthystory
Will not departfrom your hearts!
These are not deceitfulfarces
Nor frivolous and lightheartedtales.
No, these are facts, true and authenticfacts,
About a servantof God.64
It is well known that throughout the Middle Ages, and even beyond, the Bible
was considered as history, and the most authoritative history at that: "la
maltresse incontestee et suzeraine de toute historiographie."65The completed
portion of Alfonso's history of the world, the General Estoria, is in large
measure the story of the Bible.
Not unexpectedly, we find similar affirmations of truth throughout the
chronicles, even those of dubious historical merit by our standards. The two
Old French chronistic texts from which passages are cited above contain just
such claims: commenting on the tranquillity of the Black Prince's reign in
63. For examples, see Lacroix, 57-68; Duggan ?4.1. The privileged status of eyewitness
accounts goes back as far as Isidore of Seville (Etymologiae, I, 41). Cf. Beer, ch. 2: "Truth and
Eye-Witness," n. 12.
64. Theodore de Beze, Abraham sacrifiant (1550), ed. Keith Cameron et al., Textes Litteiraires
Francais 135 (Geneva, 1967), epilogue. Given as Text (j) in the Appendix. My translation.
65. Cf. Lacroix, 59ff.
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Gascony, the Herald of Chandos affirms:"in this I do not lie!" (v. 1602).
Similarly,JordanFantosmeconcludeshis accountof Robertof Vaux'svaliant
defense againstforty thousandattackersby insisting"Fantosmedoes not lie"
(v. 669). Joinville,the fourteenth-century
chroniclerof the Life of St. Louis,
servesas his own guarantorof authenticity,but only for those events in the
account which he personallyhas heard or witnessed."
What we may conclude from this selectedsample of testimonyis that the
purveyorsof epic songs, of chronicles,and of historicaland Biblical plays
were all marketingtheir productsas history, and taking pains to ensurethat
their audienceswouldbuy them as such. And it appearsthat they werelargely
successfulin theirendeavor.For just as epic poets appealedto clericalsources
to enhancethe verisimilitudeof theirsongs, clericshad occasionto makesimilar use of the epic matter.
Duggan(?4.2) cites a numberof diplomaticforgeriesin whichthe namesof
suchepicgreatsas Roland,Turpin,Ogierthe Dane, eventhe completelyunhistoricalOliver,figureamonglists of witnesses.Likewise,certainclericssought
to add distinctionto theirmonastichouses by inventingan associationwith a
particularepic hero celebratedby the populace.The late Spanishepic of the
Mocedadesde Rodrigo, a largelyfictionalaccount of the Cid's youthful exploits, is thoughtto havebeen composedby a late fourteenth-century
clericfor
the expresspurposeof validatingthe claimsof his diocesePalenciaat a critical
moment in its history.67
Like the clerics, so too authorsof learnedand semi-learnedhistoricalworks
drewupon the epics. While some of these writersmade only incidentaluse of
poetic legends,others,notablyin the thirteenthcentury,took extensiveinspiration from them: Godfrey of Viterbo, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines,Philippe
Mousket,Jean d'Outremeuse,and David Aubert.68Preeminentin this regard,
however,was Alfonso el Sabio, who incorporatedentiresegmentsof cantares
de gesta, virtually without retouching, into his Primera Cronica General,
cheekby jowl with materialfrom Arabicand Latinhistoriesand otherlearned
sources. What is intriguingabout this from the literaryhistorian'sviewpoint
is that only on the basis of these and other chronisticaccountshave scholars
been able to reconstructepicswhosepoetictexts have not survived.In the case
of the Siete Infantes de Lara (or de Salas-the name varies), the original
assonatedverseshave actuallybeen restored.69Curiousfrom our perspective,
66. Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis in Pauphilet, 372 (Chapter 149): "Je faiz savoir ai touz que
j'ai ceans mis grant partie des faiz nostre saint roy devant dit, que j'ai veu et oy, et grant partie
de ses faiz que j'ai trouvez. Et ces choses ramentoif-je, pour ce que cil qui orront ce livre croient
fermement en ce que li livres dit que j'ai vraiement veu et oy; et les autres choses qui i sont
escriptes, ne vous tesmoing que soient vraies, parce que je ne les ay veues ne oyes."
67. See Alan D. Deyermond,Epic Poetry and the Clergy:Studies on the "Mocedadesde
Rodrigo" (London, 1969).
68. Duggan, ?4.3.
69. From what is hypothesized to have been an extensive epic production in medieval Spain,
the sole poetic text to -survive nearly in its entirety is the Cantar de Mio Cid. The legends of the
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
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the eventsrecountedin the Infantesde Lara are not historicallydocumented,
though they are set against a backdropthat is quite plausiblefor the period
in question(tenthcentury).The Infantesoffersa particularlystrikingexample
of the interplaybetweenhistoryand fiction:a lost epic legendhas come to light
solely by virtue of its having been receivedas history and thus incorporated
The relationshipof hisinto variouschronicles,whenceit has been retrieved.70
tory to fictionhere is the obverse,as it were, of that whichwe find in the epic
poemsthemselves.For whilethe lattertypicallyrepresentfragmentsof history
embeddedin layers of fiction, in the case of the Infantes de Lara and other
similarlyreconstructedlegends, fictionquite literallycame to be embeddedin
history.
Pertinentalso to the focus of our inquiry is the standard"explanation"
offeredby Spanishliteraryhistoriansfor why, out of what is conjecturedto
have been a substantialbody of jongleuresquematerialin Spain, so little has
been preservedin any form, be it in the originalpoems, in chronicles,or in
later ballads.As Alvar has put it, "whatsurvivedwas only what was received
as history;the rest, the non-documentarypoetry, was cast aside and lost for
posterity"(xii).
What the epic tells us, then, is that the distinctionbetweenthe historical
deeds of kings and heroeson the one hand, and the legendaryembroideryon
those deeds, or theirinventionout of fertilepoetic imagination,on the other,
was at best blurred and probably nonexistent in the minds of intended
audiencesand even subsequentconsumersof this poetic matter.71In this regardthe chroniclesprovidean invaluablesourceof informationon the reception of epic as well as otherfictionalmatter.For it was not only the epics that
weretreatedas authentichistory,but also the Bible and the panoplyof Greek
myths,whichAlfonso, for one, blendedtogetherwithroyalhistoryin the General Estoria with no apparent difficulty. He simply humanizedthe pagan
divinitieswhom he, like most writersof his time, seems to have regardedas
exemplaryhistoricalbeings.
SieteInfantesde Lara/Salas,the Cercode Zamora,andthe Campanade Huescahavebeenreconstructed from the chronicles, largely through the extensive "text-archeological" efforts of Ram6n
Menendez Pidal. See in particular his Riliquias de la poesta dpica espafiola (Madrid, 1951). See
also Manuel Alvar, Cantares de gesta medievales (Mexico, 1972), where each poetic legend except "Rodrigo el filtimo godo," for which no poetic text has been pieced together -is given in
reconstructed verse form, in its documented chronistic versions, and finally as it evolved into
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century ballads. For a useful critique of Menendez Pidal's historical research on the poems, see Louis Chalon, L'Histoire et l'epopde castillane du moyen age: le cycle
du Cid, le cycle des comtes de Castille(Paris, 1976).
70. A second cantar of the Infantes de Lara must have been composed in the late thirteenth
or early fourteenth century (before 1344), which made use of part of the earlier poem while expanding appreciably its second half. This latter version, the better known of the two, was prosified
in three chronicles (the Chronicles of 1344, 1537, and a revision of the Tercera Crdnica General),
and is acknowledged to have been the channel through which the tenth-century gesta entered the
ballad tradition of the romancero (Alvar, 20).
71. Duggan, ?4.4.
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One final genre pertinentto our investigationis the collection of pseudobiographical sketches known as vidas, written to accompany Provengal
troubadourpoems once these came to be collected in songbooks. Approximatelya centuryseparatesthe vidas from the poetic texts whichthey purport
to illuminateby supplyinghistoricaldetails about the poet's life. Over forty
yearsago Alfred Jeanroyacknowledgedthat the fundamentalliteraryprocess
at work in the vidas was the prolongationof poetic metaphorinto narrative
anecdote.72Yet many scholarscontinueto regardthese texts as authenticbiography,or at least seek to discriminatesystematicallybetweenthose facts that
are "historicallyaccurate"(usuallythe poet's origin, family, social standing,
profession,and participationin contemporarypoliticalevents)and those (such
as his relationshipswith women)which, as one critichas put it, "weremerely
inventedin order to explain."73
The following text is one of the vidas writtenabout Bertrande Born, an
Occitanpoet active in the last quarterof the twelfth century:
Bertrande Born was a castellanof the bishopricof Perigord,lord of a castle named
Hautefort.He constantlywagedwarwith his neighbors,the count of Perigordand the
Viscount of Limoges, and with his brotherConstantinand with Count Richardof
Poitierswhile he was count. He was a good knightand a good warrior,a good lover
and a good poet, wise and well spoken, who knewhow to deal with the good and the
bad alike. He had influencewheneverhe wishedover KingHenry of Englandand his
son. But he alwaysencouragedthem to make war with each other,father, son, and
brother,as he did with the King of Franceand the King of England.And whenever
therewaspeace or a period of truce,he wouldseek by hispoems to disruptthatpeace
and show how it broughtnothingbut dishonorto each one. He reapedgreatgood as
well as greatharmfrom this mixingin. And he composedany numberof finesirventes,
of which many have been writtendown, as you can see and hear.74
This biographyappearsto be a blend of fact and fiction. Bertranwas a
Limousinnoblemanwho participatedin the petty wars of his time, fighting
now on one side, now on the other. His sole objectiveseems to have been to
secureexclusivepossessionof the castle of Hautefort, which he sharedwith
his brother.His influencewith Henry II is exaggerated,though he is reputed
to have been on intimateterms with the King'soldest son, the young King
Henry. It is doubtfulhe playedany role in HenryII's internecinestruggles,as
the vida implies.75Jeanroyclaimsthat only once did he incite Philip Augustus
72. Alfred Jeanroy, La podsie lyrique des troubadours (Paris, 1934), see esp. ch. 2.
73. Stanislaw Str6nski, La Poisie et la rialiti' au temps des troubadours (Oxford, 1943). 22.
Str6nski's bias is transparent. He accepts the vidas for their anecdotal-biographic value, but rejects
them as a potential source of literary commentary (on this see Elizabeth R. Wilson, "The Meeting
of Fact and Fiction in an Old Provengal razo," Romance Philology 33 [1980], 510-518). Str6nski
expresses the frustration of many literary historians that the vidas are not more "historical."
74. Vida of Bertran de Born, from Anthology of the Provenpal Troubadours, ed. T. Bergin
et al., 2 vols. (New Haven, 1973), 1:105. Given as Text (k) in the Appendix. Translation and
emphasis mine.
75. An exacting comparison between the vida and "history" is found in Olin H. Moore, The
Young King Henry Plantagenet (1155-1183) in History, Literature, and Tradition (Columbus,
Ohio, 1925).
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
305
to waragainstEngland,but this informationmay well have been drawnfrom
one of his poems.
Whatmatters,however,is that the legendof Bertrande Born as a political
provocateurwas receivedas historicallytrue, to the extentthat Dante bestows
uponhim an orchestraseat in Hell amongthe sowersof discord(Inferno,28).
Dante, like most of his contemporaries,seems to have regardedBertrande
Bornas a muchmore importantfigurethan he actuallywas, judgingfrom the
fact that only one chroniclerof Henry II's reign cites him by name.76
X. CONCLUSIONS
WhatI have presentedhereare selectedexamplesof the kindsof evidenceone
mightlook for concerningthe relationshipof historyto fictionin the Middle
Ages, and the investigativeparametersone might use to explorethe question.
The collectivetestimonyof the texts indicatesclearlythat therewas a concept
of historywhichwas distinctfrom fiction,and whichwas linkedto a particular
criterionof truth. But historicaltruth did not imply, as it does for us, the
authenticityof facts and events." Rather,as Jausshas put it, "sonthistoriques
... tout evenementet toute experiencequi veulent 'tre crus."78History was
whatwas willinglybelieved.Thus the epic legends,even when inventedout of
whole cloth, were acceptedas historicallytrue. And for all but a very small
clericaland aristocraticminority,theselegends,along with the exemplaof sermons, werethe only historicalnarrativeavailable.The truth criterionfor the
later historicaldramahas been formulatedin similarterms by Alan Knight,
who equatestruthin these playswith "conformityto the community'sconception of past events."79
Werewe to compilea medievaldictionary,historywould no doubt have to
be redefinedas "familiar,""legendary,""what was held to be true." This
definitionmightprovokediscomfortin certainquartersinasmuchas legendary
has sincecome to be synonymouswith false. But the issue at the time was not
objectivetruthas distinctfrom subjectivebelief. For the MiddleAges and even
well beyond, historicaltruth was anythingthat belongedto a widelyaccepted
tradition.80
76. With respect to the genre of literary biography, Lacroix insists that: "la biographiesn'est pas
l'historiographie; elle a ses lois propres et la liberty du biographe fait penser plutot a celle du poete,
tandis que l'historien, lui, s'en tient a ce qui est arrive " (44f.). It should be clear from my discussion above that I do not share this traditional view of the historian's privileged relationship to "the
facts." On biography in medieval Spanish as a distinct genre of historical writing see Benito
Sanchez Alonso's useful, if now dated, Historia de la historiografia espafiola, 2nd ed., Publicaciones de la Revista de Filologia Espafiola (Madrid, 1947).
77. Hayden White observes that only in the early nineteenth century did it become conventional
among historians to identify truth with fact and to regard fiction as the opposite of truth, hence
as a hindrance to the understanding of reality rather than as a way of apprehending it ("The Fictions of Factual Representation," 123).
78. Jauss, "Chanson de geste et roman courtois," 65.
79. Knight, The Late Medieval French Drama. See esp. ch. 2: "History and Fiction."
80. Gossman (lOf.) points out the persistence of this concept of historical truth even as late as
the eighteenth century, as evidenced by Voltaire's Essay on Epick Poetry.
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
306
Of the six parametersinvokedhereto explorethe natureof the relationship
of historyto fiction, none seemsto provideus with clear-cutlines of demarcation. All texts surveyed,historicalas well as literary,containa mixtureof fact
and fancy (insofaras "thefacts"can be knownand insofaras the two domains
can be discriminated),and of other features, textual and extratextual,that
havebeenlinkedto these respectivecategories.We mightthereforebe inclined
to acceptwithout furtherado Zumthor'sstatementthat "medievalstorytellers
did not make as cleara distinctionbetweenan accountof real eventsand fiction as did those of later periods."8"
Yet one medievalstorytellerwhose testimony has been presented- Jean Bodel- would no doubt have disagreed,and
in all likelihoodotherswouldas well. On the basisof textualevidenceconcerning intent and reception,I for one would want to reviseZumthor'sstatement
to the effect that medieval storytellersdid make a clear distinction- for
them-between realeventsand fiction,but that theirconceptionof realevents,
that is, of history,was not the same as that of storytellersof laterperiods,or
of modernanalystslike ourselveswho have assumedthe task of classifying
their stories accordingto a typology of forms of discoursedevelopedon the
basis of our own intellectualpresuppositions.
So if there is an answerto the thorny question, Wheredid historyend and
fictionbeginin the MiddleAges?, it would be that for an age in whichhistory
is definedas collectivebelief, the boundarybetweenthese two categorieswill
at best be impreciseand one that is constantlyshifting.And if we acknowledge
furtherthe prominentrole of the imaginationin the constructionof all historical narrative,the next step might well involve a returnto the pre-eighteenthcenturyview of history as a branch, albeit a major branch, of literature.82
University of California,
Berkeley
APPENDIX OF TEXTS CITED
(a) JordanFantosme,Chroniquede la guerreentreles Anglois et les Ecossoisen 1173
et 1174, ed. RichardHowlett, vv. 112-117.
Le plus honorablee le plus cunquerant
Que fust en nule terrepuis le tens Moysant,
Fors sulementli reis Charle, ki poestdfud grant
115 Par les dudze cumpaignuns,Olivier,e Rodlant.
Si ne fud mes oi en fable ne en geste
Un sul rei de sa valur ne de sa grant poeste.
81. Paul Zumthor, "Autobiography in the Middle Ages," 29.
82. No doubt many historians would be uncomfortable with this position. As Gossman notes
(30), "those historians that have been the most willing to recognize,the role of the imagination in
the writing of history or the proximity of history to fiction have also, understandably, been the
most concerned to establish the specificity of history."
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HISTORYAND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
307
(b) The Life of the Black Prince, ed. MildredK. Pope and EleanorC. Lodge, vv.
47-53.
Car je voeil mettrem'estudie
A faire et recorderla vie
Du plus vaillantprincedu monde,
Si com il tournyea le ronde,
Ne qui fust puis les tamps Clarus,
Jules Cesairene Artus,
Einsi com vous oir pourrez.
(c) The Life of the Black Prince, vv. 1600-1631.
En Gascoigneregnavii ans
1600
En joye, en pais, et en solasOr ne vous menterayje pasCar tout li princeet li baron
De tout le pays environ
1603
Vinrenta lui pour faire homage;
A bon seignour,loial et sage,
Le tenoientcommunalment
Et, s'ose dire, proprement,
Que, puis le tamps que Dieux fu nez,
Ne fu tenuz si biaux hostels
Com il fist, ne plus honourable,
Car touz jours avoit a sa table
Plus de iiiichevaliers
Et bien quatretanz escuiers.
La fesoient justes et reviaux
En Angoulemeet a Bourdiaux;
La demouroittoute noblece,
Toute joie et toute leece,
Largece, franchiseet honour,
Et l'amoientde bon amour
Tout si soubgit et tout li sien,
Car il lour fesoit moult de bien.
Moult le prisoientet amoient
Cil qui entour lui demoroient,
Car largecele soustenoit
Et noblece le governoit,
Sens, atemperanceet droiture,
Raysonset justice et mesure:
On pooit dire par raison
Que tel Prince ne trovast on,
Qui alast cerchiertout le monde,
1610
1615
1620
1625
1630
(d) Jaufre, ed. Rene Lavaud,vv. 56-91.
E cel ditz qe las a rimadas
Qe anc lo rei Artus no vi,
58 Mais tut plan contar o auzi
En la cort del plus onrat rei
Qe anc fos de negunalei,
Aco es lo re d'Aragon,
62 Paire de Pretz e fil de Don
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SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
308
66
70
74
78
82
86
90
E seiner de Bonaventura,
Humils e de leial natura,
Q'el ama Dieu e tem e cre,
E mante Liautat e Fe
Patz e Justisia, per qe Deus
L'ama, car se ten ab los seus,
Q'el es sos novels cavalies
E de sos enemics guerries.
Anc Dieus no trobet en el faila,
Ans a la primera bataila
Faita per el, el a vencutz
Cel per qe Deu es descresutz,
Per qe Deus l'a tan fort onrat
Qe sobre totz l'a isausat
De pres e de natural sen,
De galart cor e d'ardimen.
Anc en tan joven coronat
Nu ac tan bo aib ajustat,
Q'el dona grans dos volentiers
A juglars et a cavaliers,
Per que veno a sa cort tutz
Aqels qe per pros son tengutz.
E cel qe rimet la canso
Ausi denant el la raso
Dir a un cavalier estrain,
Paren d'Artus e de Galvain,
D'un'aventura qe avenc
Al rei Artus, qe gran cort tenc
A la festa de Pantecosta,
(e) Annales Sangallenses Maiores, ed. Ildefonsus ab Arx, 709-734.
709.
710.
711.
712.
713.
714.
715.
718.
719.
720.
721.
722.
723.
724.
725.
726.
727.
728.
729.
730.
731.
732.
Hiems dura. Cotefredus dux mortuus est.
Annus durus et deficiens fructus.
Aquae inundaverunt valde.
Pippinus maior domus defunctus est.
716. 717.
vastavit Karolus Saxoniam plaga magna.
Pugnavit Karolus contra Saxones.
Eeicit Theudo Saracenos de Equitania
Magna fertilitas.
Saraceni venerunt primitus.
Beatus Beda presbiter obiit.
Karolus pugnavit contra Saracenos ad Pictavis die sabato.
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HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
309
733.
734.
(f) Jordan Fantosme, Chronique.
. .,
vv. 648-668.
Grantfud la noise al estur cumencier.
Li fer tentissent,e cruissentli acier:
650 Ne haubercne healmesguafresn'i remistentier.
Le jor i furent cil dedenzchevalier:
Od lur espees funt maint escu estroer,
Asez en laissentlez le mur estraier
Ki n'orentpas leisir pur relever.
655 Des ore cuvient'aceus dedenzaidier,
L'estursuffrire les escuz damagier,
Lur barbecantenir e chalengier:
Ja'nul cuart ne lur aureitmestier.
A la porte out grant envaissement:
660 Des ambesdousparz out grant airement.
La veissieztanz chevalierssanglant,
Tant bon vassal de mal talent.
Li fer tentissent e vunt comunalment.
Robert de Vaus se defendeit forment:
665 Le fiz Odart ne li failli nient.
Pur sun seignur enprist grant hardement
De sei tenir encuntretant de gentQuarante mile, si Fantosme ne ment.
(g) La Chanson de Roland, Oxford version, ed. Cesare Segre, laisses 109, 110, *252.
(*253 in Goldin)
109. La batailleest adureeendementres. (v. 1396)
France paien merveiluscolps i rendent,
Fierentli un, li altre se defendant.
Tant'hanstei ad e fraite e sanglente,
Tant gunfanunrumpue tant'enseigne!
Tant bon Franceisi perdentlor juvente!
Ne reverruntlor meresne lor femmes,
Ne cels de Franceki as porz les atendent.
110. La batailleest merveilleuseet pesant. (v. 1412)
Mult ben i fiert Olivere Rollant,
Li arcevesquesplus de mil colps i rent,
Li .xii. per ne s'en targentnient,
E li Franciesfierentcumunement.
Moerentpaien a miller[s]e a cent:
Ki ne s'en fuit, de mort n'i ad guarent;
Voillet o nun, tut i laisset sun tens.
Franceisi perdentlor meillorsguarnemenz;
Ne reverruntlor peres ne parenz,
Ne Carlemagneki as porz les atent. .
*252. Mult bien i fierentFranceise Arrabit; (v. 3481)
Fruissentc[ez] hanste[s]e cil espiez furbit.
Ki dunc vest cez escuz si malmis,
Ces blancs osbercski dunc oist fremir
E cez es [pees]sur cez helmescruisir,
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310
SUZANNE FLEISCHMAN
Cez chevalerski dunc vest cair
E humes braire,contretere murir,
De grant dulor Ii post suvenir.
Cest batailleest mult fort a suffrir ...
(h) Richer,Histoire de France, ed. RobertLatouche,Prologue.
Quorumtemporibusbella a Gallissaepenumeropatratavariosqueeorumtumultus
ac diversas negotiorum rationes ad memoriam reducere scripto specialiter
propositum est .
. .
. Sed si ignotae antiquitatis ignorantiae arguar, ex quodam
FlodoardipresbyteriRemensislibellome aliquasumpsissenon abnuo,at non verba
quidemeadem, sed alia pro aifis longe diversissimoorationisscematedisposuisse
res ipsa evidentissimedemonstrat.
(i) Alfonso el Sabio, PrimeraCronicaGeneral,ed. MenendezPidal, Chap. 623.
Et algunosdizen en sus cantareset en sus fablas de gesta que conquirioCarloses
Espannamuchos cipdadeset muchos castiellos, et que ovo y muchas lides con
moros, et que desenbargoet abrioel caminodesdeAlemanniafasta Sanctiago.Mas
en verdat esto non podria ser, . . . onde mas deve omne creer a lo que semeia con
guisa et con razonde que falla escritoset recabdos,que non a las fablasde los que
cuentanlo que non saben.
(j) Theodorede Beze, Abrahamsacrifiant,ed. Keith Cameronet al., Epilogue.
Je vous supply',quand sortirezd'icy,
Que de vos coeurs ne sorte la memoire
De ceste digne et veritablehistoire.
Ce ne sont point des farces mensongeres,
Ce ne sont point quelquesfables legeres:
Mais c'est un faict, un faict tresveritable,
D'un serf de Dieu, de Dieu tresredoutable. . .
(k) Vidaof Bertrande Born.
Bertransde Born si fo us chastelasde l'eveschatde Peiregorc,senherd'un chastel
que avia nom Autafort. Totz temps ac guerraab totz los sieus vezis: ab lo comte
de Peiregorcet ab lo vescomtede Lemotgeset ab so fraireConstantiet ab Richart,
tan quan fo coms de Peitau. Bos chavaliersfo e bos guerrierse bos domneiairee
bos trobairee savis e be parlanse sauptractarmals e bes, et era senhertotas vetz,
quan si volia, de-l rei Henricd'Englaterrae de-l filh de lui. Mas totz temps volia
qu'ilhaguessenguerraensems, lo paire e-l filhs e-lh fraire, l'us ab l'autre,e totz
tempsvolc que-lreis de Franzae-l reis d'Englaterraaguessenguerraensems.E s'ilh
avian patz ni tregua, ades si penavae-s perchassavaab sos sirventesde desfar la
patz e de mostrar,com chascusera desonratzen la patz; e si n'ac de gransbes e
de gransmals de so qu'el mescletmal entre lor. E fetz maintzbos sirventesde-ls
quals son gran re aissi escruit, segon que vos podetz vezer et entendre.
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