Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative

Book excerpt: Eyewitness" is a familiar label that historians apply to numerous pieces of evidence. It carries compelling connotations of trustworthiness and particular proximity to the lived experience of historical actors. But it is a surprisingly little studied category of analysis. This book seeks to open up discussion of what we mean when we label a historical source in this way. Using as case studies histories about the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades, all of which were written by people caught up in the events they describe, it draws upon some of the lessons of narratology to argue that the most significant determinant of the eyewitness quality of texts such as these does not reside in what the authors as historical actors may or may not have seen, but in the terms in which they situate their narratorial personas within the storyworlds that their narratives call forth. Ultimately, historians must recognize that the eyewitness quality of histories such as these is a function of their textual effects, not the extra-textual circumstances of their authors.