Forging the Past: The Language of Historical Truth in Middle Ages

Abstract

IN THE HIERARCHY OF VALUES by which most historians live, truth stands higher than fiction, and prose higher than verse. Indeed, two are commonly linked, for prose, as a language of fact, is thought to tommunicate more accurately than poetry those truths about human experience which it is task of history to recount. This assumed affinity between history and prose, with its implicit assertion of truth-value of prose in historical discourse, so unexceptional to us, nonetheless runs counter to fundamental poetic and rhetorical traditions of ancient world. To Aristotle, for example, writing in Poetics, the distinction between historian and poet lies not in one writing prose and other (you might, says Aristotle, put work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history), but rather that history describes thing that has been, while poetry is concerned with what might be.1 Similarly, for Quintillian, history was genre most akin to poetry, since dignity of its subject matter made it most deserving of stylistic elaboration. 2 In embellishment of his topic, ancient historian was allowed, indeed encouraged, to use poetical language, employ unusual words, surprise with verbal paradoxes, and delight with complicated figures of speech and unexpected patterns of phrases.3 What distinguished history for ancients was not its level of discourse, whether high or low, versified or prosaic, nor even its truth-since poetic statements, according to Aristotle, being universal in nature where those of history were merely singular, were by nature more