medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Elena,
On Friday, December 17, 2004, at 5:20 pm, you wrote:
> Anyway, I think it is good, even necessary for historians and other
> specialists to comment on such popular bestsellers in venues
> accessible to the same audience that has read them in the first
> place. It is true that they are "just fiction", however, they are
> the exact places where popular stereotypes and misconceptions take
> shape. The Da Vinci Code is especially misleading in its style and
> its constant efforts to make the reader believe it is based on
> actual research. Not only will we eventually get to teach those
> same teenagers who have read this and other books when they come to
> us as students, but I think it is no one but medievalists who
> should provide further knowledge on popular hypes, as public
> service.
Another silk purse that could be attempted from this particular sow's
ear is an exploration of the problem of credibility in fiction, what
some of the difficulties are now in separating fictionalized fact from
outright falsehood, and what may have compounded these difficulties even
for alert readers in the western Middle Ages.
The widely accepted Dares and Dictys with their phony certificates of
authenticity might be a good place to begin: with little
counter-evidence available and virtually no understanding of ancient
contexts against which to test this material, how was one to know it was
fiction?. Within the same general corpus, there's also Guido de
Columpnis' ('delle Colonne' to those who think him identical with the
poet of the Sicilian school) political history (_Historia destructionis
Troie_) derived from Benoit de Sainte-Maure's _Roman de Troie_.
Similar instances of the acceptance of the fabulous as true history are
probably not uncommon: two that come to mind are Benedict of Mt.
Soracte's tenth-century chronicle narrative of the matter of Charlemagne
in the East (our first surviving extended treatment of this legend, BTW)
and William "of Padua"'s thirteenth-century _Gesta Karoli Magni ad
Carcassonam et Narbonam_, which wraps a foundation account of his
southern French abbey in a narrative drawn from the stuff of vernacular
epic.
Just a thought.
Best,
John Dillon
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