Description:This volume explores the nature of narrative in texts used as sources for history by modern scholars of the early medieval West. Narrative is defined here broadly as how stories are told and the volume focuses on the interaction of what texts say and with how they say it. The congruence of narrative and history is a wide subject, which can be approached in a number of ways. This volume examines four types of written source: poetry (Latin and vernacular), charters, biographical writing (hagiography and royal lives) and historical writings (histories and chronicles). These include traditional narrative sources as well as literary texts and documents not generally considered in terms of narrative. The ten studies in this volume cover a geographical range that includes the Carolingian Empire, the British Isles and Scandinavia, and from the Carolingian period through to the twelfth century.