Premodern literary forms of the story of the self: the European career of a narrative format (II)

ABSTRACT

The subject of this conference is the structure of the pre-modern first-person-narration. One of its characteristics is that it comprises large sections of speech. From this point of view, it is not entirely narrative. Some texts (like the debates) consist mostly out of dialogue, while others, like the dits, the Minnereden, dreams and visions, comprise large sections of instruction, often issued by personifications. Narrating in the first person seems to be up to the 16. century a kind of transmission of knowledge more than a way of self-expression. This is why the I narrating of itself sometimes compiles from other sources or includes 'foreign' material. But if knowledge is so much at the center of first-person narration why is it narrative at all?