"The rise of literary fiction in medieval Europe has been a hotly debated topic among scholars for at least two decades, but until now that debate has come with severe limitations, focusing on ‘modern’ French and German romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Attempting to find common ground among scholars from various disciplines and regions, Medieval Narratives between History and Fiction seeks to clarify the subject by including a wide range of medieval narratives irrespective of their modern label and affiliation to certain disciplines. The chapters collected here broaden the discussion by moving beyond the canonical French and German romances, focusing mainly on texts in Greek, Latin and Old Norse (and also some in Serbian), and by opting for a ‘peripheral’ and a long-term view of the subject. The chapters take us from Graeco-Roman antiquity to medieval France, then to the Scandinavian lands and from there to south-eastern Europe and Byzantium as the link back to the Graeco-Roman world. This disposition also follows a spiral motion in time, leading us from antiquity to late antiquity and from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. By expanding the linguistic as well as the geographical and chronological scope of the debate, the book shows that we should not think of a ‘rise of fiction’ per se; rather, we should see fiction as a potential always imbued in and related to historical narratives – and recognize that non-fictional and non-vernacular writing are important for a modern understanding of medieval fiction."--

Wide-ranging stories offer a glimpse into witchcraft, magic, Crusaders, astrology, alchemy, pacts with the Devil, chivalry, trial by torture, church councils, mercantile life, other elements of Middle Ages.

Combining literary theory and historiography, Monika Otter explores the relationship between history and fiction in the Latin literature of twelfth-century England. The beginnings of fiction have commonly been associated with vernacular romance, but Otter demonstrates that writers of Latin historical narratives also employed the self-referential techniques characteristic of fiction. Beginning with inventiones, a genre dealing with the discovery of saints' relics, Otter reveals how exploring the fundamental problems of writing history and the nature of truth itself leads monastic or clerical Latin writers to a budding awareness of fictionality. According to Otter, accounts of conquests, treasure hunts, descents into underground worlds, and efforts (usually unsuccessful) to retrieve subterranean objects serve as self-referential metaphors for the problems of accessing and retrieving the past; they are thus designed to shake the reader's faith in historical representation and highlight the textuality of the historical account. Otter traces this self-conscious use of fictional elements within historical narrative through the works of William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gerald of Wales, Walter Map, and William of Newburgh. Originally published in 1996. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This volume explores concepts of fiction in late antique hagiographical narrative in different cultural and literary traditions. It includes Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Persian and Arabic material. Whereas scholarship in these texts has traditionally focussed on historical questions, this book approaches imaginative narrative as an inherent element of the genre of hagiography that deserves to be studied in its own right. The chapters explore narrative complexities related to fiction, such as invention, authentication, intertextuality, imagination and fictionality. Together, they represent an innovative exploration of how these concepts relate to hagiographical discourses of truth and the religious notion of belief, while paying due attention to the various factors and contexts that impact readers’ responses.

This volume offers an overview of the rich narrative material circulating in the medieval Mediterranean. As a multilingual and multicultural zone, the Eastern Mediterranean offered a broad market for tales in both oral and written form and longer works of fiction, which were translated and reworked in order to meet the tastes and cultural expectations of new audiences, thus becoming common intellectual property of all the peoples around the Mediterranean shores. Among others, the volume examines for the first time popular eastern tales, such as Kalila and Dimna, Sindbad, Barlaam and Joasaph, and Arabic epics together with their Byzantine adaptations. Original Byzantine love romances, both learned and vernacular, are discussed together with their Persian counterparts and with later adaptations of western stories. This combination of such disparate narrative material aims to highlight both the wealth of medieval storytelling and the fundamental unity of the medieval Mediterranean world. Contributors are Carolina Cupane, Faustina Doufikar-Aerts, Massimo Fusillo, Corinne Jouanno, Grammatiki A. Karla, Bettina Krönung, Renata Lavagnini, Ulrich Moennig, Ingela Nilsson, Claudia Ott, Oliver Overwien, Panagiotis Roilos, Julia Rubanovich, Ida Toth, Robert Volk and Kostas Yiavis.

The last fifty years have seen a significant change in the focus of saga studies, from a preoccupation with origins and development to a renewed interest in other topics, such as the nature of the sagas and their value as sources to medieval ideologies and mentalities. The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas presents a detailed interdisciplinary examination of saga scholarship over the last fifty years, sometimes juxtaposing it with earlier views and examining the sagas both as works of art and as source materials. This volume will be of interest to Old Norse and medieval Scandinavian scholars and accessible to medievalists in general.

Three centuries after Columbus, uprisings in South America still held out the hope of a Pachacuti, or world-turning, which would reverse the fortunes of the Spanish and the Indians. One such revolt in the eighteenth-century Kingdom of Quito entwines the lives of three people in a story of desire and unextinguished hope that mirrors the complex relations between conquerors and the conquered. For Santiago Huamán the revolt sparks a quest to become a medicine man; for young Ana Alfaro it brings exile and an illicit love affair; and for the Jesuit inquisitor Gregorio Moncada, it precipitates spiritual doubt. From the baroque city of Quito to a remote hacienda in South America's largest crater, Pachacuti: World Overturned captures the grandeur and decay of the Spanish Empire on the eve of disintegration.