TY - BOOK ID - 6627820 TI - The faces of time : portrayal of the past in Old French and Latin historical narrative of the Anglo-Norman regnum PY - 1994 SN - 0292708084 9780292708082 0292769563 PB - Austin (Tex.) : University of Texas press, DB - UniCat KW - Rhetoric, Medieval KW - Normans KW - French poetry KW - Latin prose literature, Medieval and modern KW - Narrative poetry, French KW - Narration (Rhetoric) KW - Historiography KW - History and criticism KW - Great Britain KW - History KW - -Latin prose literature, Medieval and modern KW - -Normans KW - -Rhetoric, Medieval KW - French literature KW - Northmen KW - Rhetoric, Medieval. KW - History and criticism. KW - Historiography. KW - Narration (Rhetoric). KW - French narrative poetry KW - Narrative (Rhetoric) KW - Narrative writing KW - Rhetoric KW - Discourse analysis, Narrative KW - Narratees (Rhetoric) KW - Normans - Historiography - Great Britain KW - French poetry - History and criticism - To 1500 KW - Latin prose literature, Medieval and modern - History and criticism KW - Narrative poetry, French - History and criticism KW - Great Britain - History - Norman period, 1066-1154 UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:6627820 AB - The twelfth century witnessed the sudden appearance and virtual disappearance of an important literary genre—the Old French verse chronicle. These poetic histories of the British kings, which today are treated as fiction, were written contemporaneously with Latin prose narratives, which are regarded as historical accounts. In this pathfinding study, however, Jean Blacker asserts that twelfth-century authors and readers viewed both genres as factual history. Blacker examines four Old French verse chronicles—Gaimar's Estoire des Engleis (c. 1135), Wace's Roman de Brut (c. 1155) and Roman de Rou (c. 1160–1174), and Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Chronique des Ducs de Normandie (c. 1174–1180) and four Latin narratives—William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum (c. 1118–1143) and Historia Novella (c. 1140–1143), Orderic Vitalis's Historia Ecclesiastica (c. 1118–1140), and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1138). She compares their similarity in three areas—the authors' stated intentions, their methods of characterization and narrative development, and the possible influences of patronage and audience expectation on the presentation of characters and events. This exploration reveals remarkable similarity among the texts, including their idealization of historical and even legendary figures, such as King Arthur. It opens fruitful lines of inquiry into the role these writers played in the creation of the Anglo-Norman regnum and suggests that the Old French verse chronicles filled political, psychic, and aesthetic needs unaddressed by Latin historical writing of the period. ER -