Narrative Authority and the Evolution of Romance: Geoffrey of Monmouth to Thomas Malory

FAIN: FT-13967-78

Barbara Nolan
Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)

To write a book showing how particular kinds of narrative authority chosen by influential romance writers in Medieval France and England determined the beginnings of a technique which would become central to subsequent European and American fiction. Using the authoritarian voices of historian, learned commentator, bardic singer, prophet or chronicler, each contributes to the complex narrative form which hovers between various forms of ancient truth-telling and what we now call "fiction.