Literature and Historiography in the Spanish Golden Age The Poetics of History Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture Series

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.

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

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.