Ebook: Dire et représenter le vrai dans les chroniques et les romans chevaleresques catalans [PhD thesis]

Our study follows two main lines: first, a reflection on the understanding of the concept of truth by the medieval authors of the texts of our corpus, historians of the 13th and 14th centuries and novelists of the 15th century, and on how contemporary critics perceive this understanding; second, a study of the relations between these different texts which show a particular parallelism since some characteristic features of each chronicle are taken up in each novel. The two lines constantly cross and must throw light on each other. We begin with a semantic approach to the concept of truth in the texts, and then with a look into the issues related to the theme (litterature and reality, distinction between history and fiction in the Middlle Ages, particularities of the cultural context), and a discussion of critical interpretations of the veridicality of the texts. Then, in the narrative structure of each text of the corpus, we look for a relation with a common conception of the notion of truth, wich doesn't imply they have the same intentionality. On the contrary, after pointing out a common reference to a certain appearance of truth, we try to determine the levels of fictionalisation and parody in the different texts. So, we present a literary, rather than historical, reading of the chronicles, and a conception of the reuse of the chronicles by the novels as a parody of the historical discourse.