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Golden Age departures in historiography and theory of history in some ways prepared the ground for modern historical methods and ideas about historical factuality. At the same time, they fed into the period's own "aesthetic-historical culture" which amalgamated fact and fiction in ways modern historians would consider counterfactual: a culture where imaginative historical prose, poetry and drama self-consciously rivalled the accounts of royal chroniclers and the dispatches of diplomatic envoys; a culture dominated by a notion of truth in which skilful construction of the argument and exemplarity took precedence over factual accuracy. Literature and Historiography in the Spanish Golden Age: The Poetics of History investigates this grey area backdrop of modern ideas about history, delving into a variety of Golden Age aesthetic-historical works which cannot be satisfactorily described as either works of literature or works of historiography but which belong in between these later strictly separate categories.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
List of contents
Introduction
I WRITING HISTORY
1 Theory of History
Calling for Plot
Platonic History
Ut pictura historia
Verisimilitude
True Falseness
2 Historical Prose
A General History
The Historian's Toolbox
Alternative Histories
The True History
II POETICISING HISTORY
3 Theory of Poetry
Weaving a Story
Benefits of History
Writing Christian Deeds
4 Historical Poetry
A Historical Master
Popular Historiography?
Poetry as Counterhistory
The Voice of History
Destabilising Dream
III STAGING HISTORY
5 Theory of Drama
Cathartic History
Tragicomedy Takes the Stage
Theatrum Historiae
6 Historical Drama
Dramaturge of History
History-Errant
History as Divine Pageant
The Historian's Hand
Doublespeak
Conclusions
About the author
Sofie Kluge holds a PhD (2007) in Comparative Literature and a Dr. Habil. (2014) both from the University of Copenhagen. She is currently an associate professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Southern Denmark. She ia also an editor of Orbis Litterarum: International Review of Literary Studies. She is a member of the Academia Europaea. She is the author of four monographs and more than 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on a variety of literary historical and theoretical topics.
Summary
This book investigates the backdrop of modern ideas about history, delving into a variety of aesthetic-historical works which cannot be satisfactorily described as either works of literature or works of historiography but which belong in between these later strictly separate categories.
