Project head: Prof. Dr. Jörg Rogge
Project staff: Davina Brückner M.A.
The Project aims at the exploitation of a narratological method for the historical sciences by conceptualizing a specific method and theory. Therefore theoretical basics of relevant concepts will be evaluated, the respective concepts will be tested with regard to their assignability and are updated where necessary. In comparison to approaches, that analyze the products of (post)modern historical sciences narratologically or those, that approach the historical variability of narratology itself, the current project focuses on a narratological analysis of the historical object – the written record. Here a practice-oriented specifying of the narratologic analytical categories should be carried out on the basis of two historio(bio-)graphical documents of the 14th and 15th centuries.
Both works originate from Scotland, one is John Barbour’s Brus, the other Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon. Aberdeen’s archdeacon John Barbour wrote his (pseudo-)biographical romance about the life and work of Scotland’s legendary king Robert Bruce around 1375 in the sphere of the first king of the Steward dynasty Robert II. The narration focuses on the battles and campaigns, which were fought after the death of Alexander III between the Scottish and the English and ends with the death of the main protagonists between 1329 and 1332. The Scotichronicon is a classical chronicle, that was compiled by Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm, around 1445. Bower, who entirely incorporates the Chronica Gentis Scotorum of John Fordun, starts the narration at times of the flood and comes to an ends with the assassination of King James I of Scotland in 1437. The focus of the narration essentially lies on matters of Scottish history, as the name of the chronicle already indicates.
It is not only because of the frequently attested scantiness of written documents for that time and space, why both works are deemed important references of their times, as they inform about (alleged) events of the past. For the current project they are of special interest because they can be conceived as contemporary products of (attempted) coping with contingency.
Contact: Davina Brückner