Gregory of Tours’ Poetics

Abstract

This article uncovers some of the intricate story-telling patterns in the Histories of Gregory of Tours (ca. 538–594 CE). In The Poetics of Biblical Narrative , Meir Sternberg outlines a method of interpretation useful for approaching a literary artifact whose self-classification is history, identifying three principles operating interdependently within any narrative work: the ideological, the historiographical, and the aesthetic. These principles produce a complex network of linkages which make up the narrative as a mode of communication. Using Sternberg’s model as an instrument of interpretation, this analysis identifies narrative devices as functional structures for the Decem Libri Historiarum , such as intentional gaps, repetitions, and time manipulations. Gregory’s narrative demonstrates a flexible poetics, serving the purposes of history and ideology side-by-side. Narrative devices otherwise functionally at odds with one another (omission vs. repetition) are combined to produce a unitary artistic logic.