So far, historiographic constructions of identity have often been debated in rather straightforward terms. Did historiography have any impact on ethnic, political or religious identities at all? And if so, which identity did a particular work construct? On the whole, recent historical, textual and literary critique has led to an increasing scepticism towards the value of historiographic sources, both for an adequate reflection of 'real' communities (because of the texts´ biases) and for the impact they may have had in creating or promoting identities (because the audience and influence of the texts is only rarely attested). The present series of workshops, and the volume/s resulting from them, aim at developing a more adequate approach based on several premises: First, most works of historiography did not construct a single identity, but balanced a whole range of possible identifications; their narratives developed several options and explored both their chances and limitations. Second, by doing so, each work reacts to other possible identifications, in the context of a polyphonic discussion of which most voices are lost, but which might be reconstructed to a point through a careful reading of the reactions specified in our texts. Third, resulting from this, many historiographical texts reach some degree of self-reflectivity, and constitute a forum in which 'visions of community' can be tested against historical events. And fourth, attentive study of the manuscript transmission provides an essential way of accessing the impact and the transformations of a historiographical text, and of closing in on the successive identifications which it supported. Our research has to match the complexity of the narrative if we want to reconstruct the role of a text in the process of social communication about identity and community of which it is a trace. In this context, the planned project looks at the transformation of the Antique and Medieval historiographical narrative, its changing social function for the construction of identities and its varying salience in various cultures and at different times.

This workshop discusses Central European and Eastern Central European historiographies of the High and Late Middle Ages. It deals thus with histories written at a time which brought about a profound differentiation of medieval societies in these regions – among others, a differentiation of the nobility, the rise of urban societies, the formation of new social strata and distinct groups (for example universities), and an increasing mobility and permeability of social elites. These and many other changes presented a serious challenge to the cohesion of both to individuals and social groups. Consequently, the demand for reassuring identifications grew more pressing with the rising number of social strata achieved their share of economic and political power. Narrative offers for identification produced and reproduced by historiography perhaps did not necessarily grow more complex than in the previous periods, but surely more differentiated – often tailored specifically for distinct social groups, in competition with other groups and their narratives, and often using the language of a particular target group: the vernaculars instead of the universal language of elite education, Latin.

The workshop aims at exploring whether and in which way new social demands and new languages influenced historiographical narratives, their forms and contents, their impact and their reception. It addresses the question of which strategies of identification individual works developed to balance the many alternative modes of identification. What happened to historiographical narratives dominant in the European Early Middle Ages in times characterized by a substantial increase and diversification of source material and narrative forms and styles? Which narratives were appropriated and adapted in new societal contexts, thus transforming into new models for the construction of communities still serving the political agenda of their authors? Which of them in turn lost their direct impact and thus became "petrified" elements of specific, e.g. learned, discourses? Which new narratives were developed? What role did historiography have in shaping the communication between particular social groups and in the formation of new narrative communities on – and beyond – local and regional levels?

Of an eminent interest is also the interplay between the languages – in the area under scrutiny that was linguistically imprinted by, apart from Latin, mainly German and Czech, but also Polish and Hungarian. In this interplay orality and literacy interacted, mutually affecting each other. Late medieval source material suggests complex relations not only between Latin and vernaculars, but also between oral and written language. Both were used in heterogeneous ways both in Latin and in the vernaculars, in learned and popular discourses. Which consequences do these interrelations have for our assessment of the way historical actors thought about history and why and how they made use of writing history to make sense of their worlds and the social relations within it?

Information

http://www.univie.ac.at/viscom

http://www.overmode.oeaw.ac.at

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Organized by

SFB Visions of Community (F42)

ERC-StG OVERMODE

CMS Praha

Funded by

FWF der Wissenschaftsfonds

ERC

CMS Praha