To browse Academia. This paper reexamines the distinction between fiction and reality in medieval times, and in political discourses. Relying on diverse sources and narrative devices, and particularly on the organic metaphor or 'body politic', this contribution aims to better delineate the medieval 'regime of truth and fiction', as it also questions a few other traditional boundaries, as between disciplines, between religion and politics, and between Middle Ages and modern times. Looking at mythical dimensions in medieval narratives, the aim of this paper is to show β by discussing monstrosity in conjunction with femininity and orientalism respectively β that medievalism, which is not automatically a purely creative preoccupation with the past, needs our critical attention.
This is therefore a call for critical medievalism. The show Game of Thrones operates on medievalist fantasy elements which are grafted onto a long tradition of appropriating the past and using it as an imaginary canvas. Medieval tales themselves functioned on a mythical plane where the line between claims to historical accuracy and creative leeway is blurred.
It has come to my attention that many members of the SCA do not have a basic grasp of medieval literary theory. Thus when they attempt to read a medieval work they are often frustrated by conflicting signals in the text and by unclear messages. Therefore, I intend to provide the reader with an understanding of the process by which medieval works may be understood.
In doing so I do not pretend to claim that the ideas which I set down are a comprehensive rendering of the entire period or all texts, for such works as Beowulf and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are drastically different in content and style. However, there are enough common factors among the various literary works of the medieval period that some critical norms for the Middle Ages can be established. In addition to giving the reader a working knowledge of the terms and concepts of medieval literary theory, I will also show that the quest for meaning is the primary concern of medieval literary interpreters, and thus, not only a 20th century idea as many modern literary scholars would have us believe.
Vera Lex Historiae? The Castilian fourteenth-century author Don Juan Manuel is most renowned for his frame-tale collection of exempla, the 'Conde Lucanor' , but he wrote numerous works of fiction and history, always in a didactic vein. It is argued that autofictional and other reality elements are not so much an attempt to verify or authenticate otherwise fictional narratives, as it is a conscious play on the common ground of the historical and the fictional mode, and part of a cohesive didactic strategy on the part of the author in question β interconnected with his social and political position in fourteenth-century Castile.
