Truth and convention in the Middle Ages : medieval rhetoric, representation and reality

Medieval assumptions about the nature of literary and historical narrative representation were widely different from our own. Writers and readers looked for truths that were not necessarily literal or empirical fact, and the embellishments of language bore a more complex relationship to the objects of representation in the historical past that was depicted. Ruth Morse's challenging book makes a study of the principles of rhetorical invention that operate as a context for the interpretation of medieval historical narratives. It examines the background of medieval education in rhetoric, commentary and invention, and looks at different modes of writing--history, biography and translation. She traces ways in which historical narratives claimed their legitimacy, for example by reference to earlier textual authorities. In analyzing the complex process of narrative reconstruction, the author herself reconstructs medieval habits of reading and writing, and provokes far-reaching questions about language and representation. List of plates Preface and acknowledgements Introduction 1. Meaning and Means 1.1 The rhetorical approach to education 1.2 Learning through commented texts 1.3 Imitation of speech, style, and action 1.4 The exercises of rhetorical invention 2. The meaning of the past 2.1 Historical fictions 2.2 Exercising historical invention 3. Let us now praise famous men 3.1 Encomiastic lives 3.2 Models of sanctity 3.3 Exercising biographical invention 4. Traitor and translator 4.1 Reference and representation 4.2 The conventional wisdom of translators 4.3 Sacred wisdom 4.4 Words and deeds 5. Texts and pre-texts 5.1 Invention and representation 5.2 Convention and invention 5.3 Truth and convention Notes Index Medieval assumptions about the nature of the representation involved in literary and historical narratives were widely different from our own. Writers and readers worked with a complex understanding of the relations between truth and convention, in which accounts of presumed fact could be expanded, embellished, or translated in a variety of accepted ways. When the educational habits that were developed in classical antiquity devolved upon the countries of medieval Europe, they created standards and raised problems for the Christian West. Ruth Morse. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 249-287) And Index.