History, Fiction, Verisimilitude
Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried's 'Tristan'

Mark Chinca

Bithell Series of Dissertations 18

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 35

Modern Humanities Research Association for the Institute of Germanic Studies

1 January 1993  •  144pp

ISBN: 978-0-947623-49-4 (paperback)  •  RRP £25, $40

MedievalGermanPoetry


This study of Gottfried von Strassburg discusses the narrative technique of his romance Tristan (c. 1210) against the double background of Latin rhetoric and poetics on the one hand, and the developing written vernacular tradition on the other. It argues that Gottfried's poetics represents the attempt to mediate between opposing tendencies in vernacular narrative, the one historiographic and archival, the other fictional and experimental.

Verisimilitude, the 'res ficta quae tamen fieri potest', occupies an intermediate position between the res factae of history and the res fictae of poetry; it is on this middle ground that Gottfried situates his narrative.

Bibliography entry:

Chinca, Mark, History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried's 'Tristan', Bithell Series of Dissertations, 18 (Cambridge: MHRA, 1993)

First footnote reference: 35 Mark Chinca, History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried's 'Tristan', Bithell Series of Dissertations, 18 (Cambridge: MHRA, 1993), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Chinca, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Chinca, Mark. 1993. History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried's 'Tristan', Bithell Series of Dissertations, 18 (Cambridge: MHRA)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Chinca 1993: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Chinca 1993: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


This title was first published by Modern Humanities Research Association for the Institute of Germanic Studies but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association and the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies.

This title is now out of print.


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