HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

250 PETER AINSWORTHis one of the first vernacular ‘histories’ of the Middle Ages to authenticateits content by reference to the author’s physical presence atkey moments of the narrative. The essay then moves on to considerthe impact of the crusades on historiography written in both Latinand Old French, and concludes with an examination of one of thegreatest exemplars of eyewitness history from the Middle Frenchperiod: Jean Froissart and his Chroniques.For reasons discussed immediately below and elsewhere in thisvolume, 3 the period running from the early twelfth century to ca.1250 marked a watershed in the development of western Europeanawareness of historicity and, therefore, of the past. Several interrelatedfactors were involved, many of which have been explored byDominique Boutet in a groundbreaking study entitled Formes littéraireset conscience historique aux origines de la littérature française (1100–1250). 4Perhaps the most fundamental issue at stake in this context was thegrowing tension between what was then understood by historical andother kinds of truth, or as Boutet expresses it:la question, lancinante pour le Moyen Age, des rapports entre fictionet vérité historique au plan de l’écriture et, plus encore, de la réceptiondes œuvres, mais aussi celle des relations réciproques qu’entretiennentà cette époque l’Histoire et l’imaginaire. 5The term ‘Histoire’ (capitalized) is used here by Boutet to refer toworks whose referent is essentially historical, to distinguish them fromworks referring primarily or exclusively to the literary or imaginary(here termed ‘histoire’); but as Boutet readily acknowledges, the distinctionis difficult to maintain in absolute terms when one looks atthe spread of narrative works composed in the vernacular between1100 and 1250, almost all of whose authors would claim to be tellingthe truth in one way or another:In the period under consideration (from the beginning of the twelfthto the middle of the thirteenth century), all of these texts claim to “tellthe truth” (a term which can cover a moral concept, a teaching, oran objective historical reality that the text claims to imitate); this claimcan at times appear all the stronger for occurring in narratives thatare ostensibly implausible in character. Fabliaux, lays, and Arthurian3Ainsworth, “Legendary History”, see p. 387 below.4Boutet (1999).5Boutet (1999), 3.