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

Mark Chinca

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CC BY-NC 4.0
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MHRA Texts and Dissertations 35

Bithell Series of Dissertations 18

Modern Humanities Research Association for the Institute of Germanic Studies

1 January 1993

ISBN: 978-1-839546-73-0 (Hosted on this website)

Open Access with doi: 10.59860/td.b7be3da

MedievalGermanPoetryopen


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.

This book, originally published in paperback in 1993 under the ISBN 978-0-947623-49-4, was made Open Access in 2024 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.

Contents:

i-viii, 1-135

History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried’s ‘Tristan’
Mark Chinca
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i-viii

History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried’s ‘Tristan’ - Front Matter
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c8cb111

Contents, Preface, and List of Illustrations.

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1-14

Chapter I: Introduction
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c050ece

Poetics in the medieval school curriculum; the influence of Ernst Robert Curtius in the historiography of this period; Walter Haug’s contrary view; Gottfried von Strassburg and his predecessors; the German narrative tradition around 1200; previous studies.

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15-45

Chapter II: The Vernacular Narrative Between Archive and Experiment
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c160315

Archival narratives; Experimental narratives; Gottfried von Strassburg: poeta or historiographus?

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46-60

Chapter III: History and the Love Story: Archival Topics in Tristan
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c26f75c

Retrospection; Istorje, geste and the senemaere; The path through the archives; Memoria; History in the poetics of the senemaere.

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61-85

Chapter IV: Poeta et Historiographus: The Example of Lucan
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c37eb3f

Patterns in the medieval reception of the Pharsalia; Fiction and the supernatural: the poeta-vates complex; Fiction and diction: the poet as colourist.

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86-99

Chapter V: The Law of Verisimilitude
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c48df86

Anselm of Laon on verisimilitude; The law of verisimilitude in Thomas and Gottfried.

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100-09

Chapter VI: Verisimilitude and the Argumentum
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c59d3cd

Argumentum: a narrative genre; Tristan’s combat with Morold.

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110-22

Chapter VII: Tristan as Narrator
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c6ac42c

Tristan’s unreliable stories, sometimes motivated and sometimes seemingly gratuitous.

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123-35

History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried’s ‘Tristan’ - End Matter
Mark Chinca
doi:10.59860/td.c6aef93

Bibliography, Index, and back cover.

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Bibliography entry:

Chinca, Mark, History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried’s Tristan, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 35 (MHRA, 1993)

First footnote reference: 35 Mark Chinca, History, Fiction, Verisimilitude: Studies in the Poetics of Gottfried’s Tristan, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 35 (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, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 35 (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.


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