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1 results

  • Chapter 20 - Tall Tales from the Archive

  • from Part III - Practice
  • Edited by Jennifer Jahner, California Institute of Technology, Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth M. Tyler, University of York
  • Book:
    Medieval Historical Writing
    Published online:
    19 December 2019
    Print publication:
    28 November 2019, pp 356-369

  • Summary

    The administrative documents preserved in archives tell stories which are shaped by their institutional and governmental context, and are as deceptive and full of invention as more self-consciously literary works. Medieval archives contain a vast repository of historical narratives which, despite their fictional components and bureaucratic manipulation, nevertheless provide vivid insights into everyday life. The rhetorical conventions of such bureaucratic documents as pardons, petitions and appeals represent forms of historical literature which are cultural productions of equal significance to the chronicle or the epic poem. But, unlike court poetry or chronicles, the archives tell us a great deal about the life of ordinary people. In the wake of the discussion of the archive by Foucault and Derrida, the archive has been seen as a symbol of power and a means of control, but often the archive is the chief means by which non-elite groups find their voice.