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- Title
DIGRESSION OR DISCOURSE? WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH'S GHOST STORIES AS URBAN LEGENDS.
- Authors
Ruch, Lisa M.
- Abstract
William of Newburgh's inclusion of four ghost stories in his Historia rerum Anglicarum has been noted by various scholars. However, the question of why William would choose to insert these seemingly digressive tales into a specific point of his chronicle -- one which is lauded for its historical reliability -- has not been adequately addressed. Instead, scholars studying the tales have focused on their folkloric or popular roots, their function as religious exempla, or their anthropological significance as indicators of twelfth-century views of life and death. Their narratological function in the chronicle as a whole has not been studied. This article seeks to initiate that discussion, tying William's four tales of the supernatural to the history into which they are inserted while reading them through the lens of urban legend study. Their four-fold display of a cycle of error, loss, expiation and redemption correlates to William's descriptions of the events during the reign of Richard I which surround the ghost narratives. A close reading of this interplay of historia and fabula shows the craftsmanship and artistry of William of Newburgh's chronicle.
- Subjects
GHOST stories; URBAN folklore; CHRONOLOGY; SCHOLARS; HORROR tales
- Publication
Medieval Chronicle, 2013, Vol 8, p261
- ISSN
1567-2336
- Publication type
Article