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Vera Lex Historiae?: Constructions of Truth in Medieval Historical Narrative

Vera Lex Historiae?: Constructions of Truth in Medieval Historical Narrative

Paperback

Medieval & Renaissance HistoryHistoriography

ISBN10: 1685710301
ISBN13: 9781685710309
Publisher: Punctum Books
Published: Aug 18 2022
Pages: 370
Weight: 0.81
Height: 0.77 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English

Writing circa 731 CE, Bede professes in the introduction to his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum that he will write his account of the past of the English following only vera lex historiae. Whether explicitly or (most often) implicitly, historians narrate the past according to a conception of what constitutes historical truth that emerges in the use of narrative strategies, of certain formulae or textual forms, in establishing one's own ideological authority or that of one's informants, in faithfulness to a cultural, narrative, or poetic tradition. If we extend the scope of what we understand by history (especially in a pre-modern setting) to include not just the writings of historians legitimated by their belonging to the Latinate matrix of christianized classical history writing, but also collective narratives, practices, rituals, oral poetry, liturgy, artistic representations, and acts of identity - all re-enacting the past as, or as representation of, the present, we find a plethora of modes of constructions of historical truth, narrative authority, and reliability.

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Medieval & Renaissance History