HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

8 DEBORAH MAUSKOPF DELIYANNIScritical study devoted to them individually. 27 Synthetic works werefew. 28The study of medieval historical texts began to intensify after the1957 publication of Herbert Grundmann’s Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter:Gattungen, Epochen, Eigenart. Surveying medieval historiographicaltexts relatively briefly, Grundmann divided his study into two sections,one based on genre (he included oral poetry, ethnic history,world chronicle, annal, vita, gesta, national and urban chronicle, andLatin poetry), and one on chronology (Germanic, Carolingian,Ottonian/Salian, Investiture, Barbarossa, and late Middle Ages). Thisformat allowed him first to examine texts of the same basic typefrom different periods, and then to explain which genres were morepopular in the different periods. Focused mainly on Germany, Grundmannnevertheless attempted to draw generalizations and formulatecategories for the whole of medieval historiography.Since 1957, the study of medieval historiography has snowballed.Articles, dissertations, conference proceedings, and monographs onindividual texts, groups of texts, and/or theoretical aspects of medievalhistoriography have appeared at an accelerating rate, as a glance atthe bibliography of the present volume makes clear. In 1974, RogerRay published a survey of research on medieval historiography, inwhich he noted that scholars writing about medieval historiographyhad three main concerns: “genre, the impact of the Bible, and theinfluence of classical literature”. 29 Since Ray wrote, each of theseapproaches has been continued by large numbers of scholars, andbroadened and expanded. Today, one might add to Ray’s list topicssuch as audience reception, concepts of historical consciousness,notions of truth, narrative structures, literary and fictional aspects ofhistory-writing, and the role of gender. 3027See Vasina (in this volume).28An exception is Marie Schulz’s Die Lehre von der historischen Methode bei denGeschichtschreibern des Mittelalters (VI–XIII Jahrhundert), published in 1909.29Ray (1974), 35. Genre, for Ray, included studies in which scholars attemptedto decide into what genres medieval historiography should be divided, and alsostudies of a particular genre as a whole. For the former, projects such as that ofvan Caenegem and Ganshof (1978), as well as the survey by Grundmann (1957);for the latter, for example, Anna Dorothea von den Brincken’s study of universalhistory (1957).30See, for example, Beer (1981); Pizarro (1989); Morse (1991); Goetz (1999); vanHouts (1999).