Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Spelling, Quotations and Translations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- Part I Memoirists as Eyewitnesses and Individuals
- 1 Preliminary Enquiry: The Appearance of Authors as Protagonists
- 2 Truth and Eyewitnessing
- 3 Individualism
- Part II The Reality of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Part III Things Worthy of Remembrance
- Part IV The Politics of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Conclusions
- Appendix A Were Renaissance Military Memoirs a Novel Phenomenon?
- Appendix B The Memoirists
- Works Cited
- Index
- Warfare in History
2 - Truth and Eyewitnessing
from Part I - Memoirists as Eyewitnesses and Individuals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Spelling, Quotations and Translations
- Dedication
- Introduction
- Part I Memoirists as Eyewitnesses and Individuals
- 1 Preliminary Enquiry: The Appearance of Authors as Protagonists
- 2 Truth and Eyewitnessing
- 3 Individualism
- Part II The Reality of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Part III Things Worthy of Remembrance
- Part IV The Politics of Renaissance Military Memoirs
- Conclusions
- Appendix A Were Renaissance Military Memoirs a Novel Phenomenon?
- Appendix B The Memoirists
- Works Cited
- Index
- Warfare in History
Summary
There are some pieces of evidence supporting the idea that Renaissance military memoirs are interested above all in truth-production; that they are founded on the figure of the memoirist as eyewitness and truth-guarantor; and that they are accordingly a natural evolution out of eyewitness-histories. First, the trend of memoirs-writing in the Burgundian court was heavily influenced by the line of eyewitness-historians beginning with Jean le Bel and Froissart. And in Froissart's case in particular we can clearly see how a general chronicle evolved first into an eyewitness-history, and eventually almost into memoirs. Froissart the protagonist gains more and more importance as a guarantor of truth, to the point where the chronicle begins to follow him.
Secondly, questions of truthfulness and eyewitnessing are indeed quite prominent in many Renaissance military memoirs. Thus many memoirists apologize for their rude style and lack of skills, arguing that this is compensated for by their truthfulness. Others go further and seem to take pride in the fact that they write without eloquence, as if lack of eloquence guarantees truthfulness. They try to convince their audience that you have to be eloquent in order to be subtle and deceitful, and that therefore a simple and even bad style is a guarantee of truthfulness.
Similarly, some memoirists emphasize their role as eyewitnesses. Several memoirists then link eyewitnessing with truthfulness, arguing that the fact that they are eyewitnesses guarantees the truthfulness of what they write, and hence compensates for their rude style.
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- Renaissance Military MemoirsWar, History and Identity, 1450–1600, pp. 27 - 42Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004