The figure of a hero: Reading metaphor in the 'new history' of the twelfth century

"The Figure of a Hero" argues that medieval historians did not entrust the transmission of the important deeds of their age to a literalist language of representation. Rather, the great historians of the twelfth-century saw the writing of history as an artful project that was only meaningfully conveyed through a language of metaphor. Unlike their modern counterparts, medieval historians were able to make an effective use of metaphor in their histories because they made references to a literary tradition that, if printed in their modern editions, would fit on one small, rather unassuming bookshelf. Indeed, the composition of this tightly knit literary tradition allowed medieval historians and their audiences to know, master, and manipulate these texts in ways quite foreign to modern historiographical practice. Because modern historians have become inured to the power of metaphor in the writing of history, they have made a distinction between the object of medieval and modern historiography that need not exist. By reading Latin histories of the twelfth-century with an eye towards their artful use of metaphor, I illustrate that medieval historians wrote about their past in a way that is surprisingly consistent with the object of modern historians. Thus, "The Figure of the Hero" gives a new reading to the practice of history in the twelfth-century and opens a new dialogue between the intellectual traditions of the medieval and modern worlds.