In a book with a title similar to that of this chapter Knapp presents a wide-ranging and theoretical discussion of the medieval classification of literary genres and the place found within it (or not) for the romance as a representative of literary fiction. This present chapter is concerned with the relationship between fiction and history in another sense, posing a genetic, rather than generic question, asking how the romance arose out of contact with historical writing. Examples from medieval, but also classical literature will be discussed because both faced the problem of accommodating the new genre of the romance and the novel phenomenon of literary fiction.

TYPES OF NARRATIVE

Under this heading we revert to a classification that proved its usefulness in our definition of twelfth-century fictionality. In doing so we are not taking up Knapp's generic question (for these types of narrative are not strictly identical with what could be called genres), but rather the genetic question how far these types were the occasion for the emergence of fictional writing from historiography. At issue are the three categories of narration (originally at home in classical oratory but in the twelfth century applied to poetics) in their relation to reality as discussed systematically by Mehtonen from classical antiquity through to the thirteenth century. Historia treats of what actually happened in the past, argumentum treats a hypothetically possible case as if it had really occurred, whilst fabula is a fiction dealing with what had not and could not have happened.