Jaume Aurell

Jaume Aurell i Cardona

This innovative study explores the emergence, survival, and continued cultural importance of historical texts considered to be 'classics'.

The Making of a Historical Canon

What is a Classic in History?

Authoring the Past surveys medieval Catalan historiography, shedding light on the emergence and evolution of historical writing and autobiography in the Middle Ages, on questions of authority and authorship, and on the links between history and politics during the period. Jaume Aurell examines texts from the late twelfth to the late fourteenth century—including the Latin Gesta comitum Barcinonensium and four texts in medieval Catalan: James I’s Llibre dels fets, the Crònica of Bernat Desclot, the Crònica of Ramon Muntaner, and the Crònica of Peter the Ceremonious—and outlines the different motivations for the writing of each. For Aurell, these chronicles are not mere archaeological artifacts but rather documents that speak to their writers’ specific contemporary social and political purposes. He argues that these Catalonian counts and Aragonese kings were attempting to use their role as authors to legitimize their monarchical status, their growing political and economic power, and their aggressive expansionist policies in the Mediterranean. By analyzing these texts alongside one another, Aurell demonstrates the shifting contexts in which chronicles were conceived, written, and read throughout the Middle Ages. The first study of its kind to make medieval Catalonian writings available to English-speaking audiences, Authoring the Past will be of interest to scholars of history and comparative literature, students of Hispanic and Romance medieval studies, and medievalists who study the chronicle tradition in other languages.

History, Autobiography, and Politics in Medieval Catalonia

Authoring the Past

Rocío G. Davis

Ana Beatriz Delgado

This collection focuses on how literary creativity and historical inscriptions produce texts that require nuanced readings of forms of life writing. These reflections support the use of life writing as an interpretative frame for historical information, validating it for historical discourse as the act of telling and writing one's story affirms as it performs identity. The approach is based on a methodology that connects genre studies and historiography, to arrive at conclusions about the writing of the history of globalization, immigration, racial and ethnic negotiation.

Jaume Aurell i Cardona

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