The hazy line between history and fiction--historia and fabula--is a topic that is rich in nuance and possibility. This collection of essays asks what medieval writers and audiences viewed as truth, and to what extent their historiographical tradition leveraged generic ambiguities to make rhetorical claims. In short, the contributors tackle the question, “what does it mean to claim a narrative about the past is true?” (36). To enrich the scholarly conversation on the topic, the various authors address questions of truth as “a function of the culturally determined socio-emotional appropriateness of a narrative” (69) writ large. The volume’s essays, arranged alphabetically by author, can each be read as stand-alone pieces, or together as a dialogue that is interdisciplinary and comparatist.
A robust preface by Michael J. Kelly, “Truth & Anti-History,” along with the introduction by Catalin Taranu and Ralph O’Connor, survey the wide-ranging discourse on the subject. Paired together, they provide an in-depth and solidly supported overview of medieval audiences’ views of history, fiction, and truth, drawing on a wide range of theorists. Following this stage-setting is Kim Bergqvist’s chapter, “The Shoemaker and the Troubadour Knight, and other Stories: Historicity and the Truth of Fiction in Medieval Castilian Literature.” Bergqvist focuses on the insertion of historical persons in literary narratives, acknowledging the playfulness of metafiction and narrative plausibilities that draw in readers with evocative settings and characterizations. These plausibilities both entertain and encourage deeper engagement with both history and truth.
In “How the Barking Nuns Forgot Their Abbesses,” Cynthia Turner Camp focuses on the homogenization of character in ecclesiastical biographies from Barking Abbey in England. Drawing on liturgical rites and anniversaries, Camp argues that the collective memory of the nuns and abbesses of Barking was kept alive in daily practice, providing a glimpse into a feminist milieu that has not always been seen as overt by modern scholars. Catherine E. Karkov turns to another non-written source that can be used to explore the past in “Alternative Histories: Phantom Truths in Stone.” While her focus is on England in the seventh and eighth centuries, she brings in comparatist viewpoints with the consideration of analogues in both the Incan Andes and India. Karkov posits that stonework, both in situ and repurposed, gives us insights into societies’ relationships to both the land around them and their histories. Numerous photographs support her points and further engage readers. Justin Lake turns to Classical rhetoric in his chapter, “NarratioProbabilis in Early Medieval Historiography,” exploring how Ciceronian approaches to the writing of history are employed by northern French writers such as Abbo of Fleury and Gerbert of Aurillac, concluding that, in their era, Classical rhetorical tropes helped history writing shift to “an artificially constructed narratio” (203) incorporating plausible elements that may not have been strictly true.
Ingela Nilsson’s chapter, “The Literary Imaginary of the Past as the Truth of the Present: Occasional Literature in Twelfth-Century Constantinople,” provides an in-depth discussion of how the written word can serve as a bridge between our time and the medieval era while straddling fact and fiction. This not only provides more fodder for the consideration of historia versus fabula, but also deepens inquiry into Byzantine literature and its creators, informing our understanding of both the past and our own time. Ralph O’Connor shifts the focus northward with his “Romance, Legend, and the Remote Past: Historical Framing in Late Medieval Icelandic Sagas,” another genre of writing with fluid boundaries. He argues that “the limits of truthfulness in historical writing were often broader than we assume” (257), with historical narratives influencing dramatic retellings and the romance tradition. The final essay in the collection, Catalin Taranu’s “‘Truth is the trickiest’: Vernacular Theories of Truth and Strategies of Truth-making in Old English Verse,” takes on auctoritas, traditio, and collaboratio as a trinity of intentional strategies employed to construct truth. Like other contributors to the volume, he sees the early English texts he focuses on as playful thought exercises that reflect “a narrative truth that dwells in virtuality” (350).
This brief overview of the essays’ topics is intended to give a flavor of the collection’s impressive breadth and scope. Each chapter is also a deep exploration into texts, theories, and further avenues for exploration. A wealth of footnotes and comprehensive bibliographies in each chapter will be valuable tools for those interested in the fascinating topic of truth in history and fiction. It is also important to commend Punctum Books for the affordability of such a robust volume.