Estoria de Espana and the Ideology of Historical Discourse - Case Study Example

 Estoria de Espana and the Ideoplogy of Historical Discourse Introduction Conventional attitudes maintain that there is a marked distinction between history and fiction. David Carr explains that ‘history relates events that really happened in the past, fiction portrays imaginary events, that is, things that never happened at all.’(Carr) In this sense historical discourse is a method of writing by which the events rather than a narrator tells the story. The latter form of story telling is primarily attributed to works of fiction. Although any historical discourse is grounded in actual events, those events are subject to interpretation. Hayden White said the ‘the facts might be truthfully set forth, and the interpretation of them misguided. Or conversely, a given interpretation of events might be suggestive, brilliant, perspicuous, and so on, and still not justified by the facts or square with the story related in the narrative aspect of the discourse.’(White 1987 p.28) When looked at in this light, Rolland Barthes’ statement that historical discourse is essentially a product of ideology. Estoria de Espana, a Spanish historical discourse, reflects the veracity of Barthes’ statement. Estoria de Espana/Background Alfonso X, also known as El Sabio for the wise, became king of Leon and Castile in the year 1252 until his death in 1284. During his reign he commissioned scholars at the School of Translators to write many works of interest particularly translations of historical works, scientific data and legal cannons. He also commissioned original literary works including the Estoria de Espana which is believed to have commenced in 1260 and was not completed until after Alfonso’s death in 1289. (Weller) The first version of Estora de Espana which was completed in 1270 contained approximately four hundred chapters. The final version approved by Alfonso X contained 612 chapters. (Deyermond, 2001 pp 157-158) The work purports to represent a chronicle of Spanish history from the far reaches of Biblical times to the reign of Alfonso. (Deyermond, 2001) Interspersed in the historical chronology of events are myths as well as legends and historical sources origination from the Greeks. Be that as it may, Estoria de Espana was accepted as the history of Spain until the Modern Age.(Deyermond 2001) Estoria de Espana as a Historical Discourse Despite the fact that Estoria de Espana purports to be a historical discourse, the sources used in its compilation is evidence easily supportive of Barthes’ contention that a historical discourse is a product of ideology. Even the manner and style of delivery suggest that Barthes is correct. Nancy Joe Dyer noted that ‘each authority-the Bible, patristic writers, classical and folk literature-displayed its own distinctive style of language and unique patterns of content selection, thereby implying preexisting different ideological and creative criteria.’ (Dyer) Although knitted together by a group of scribes and scholars over a period of time, Estoria de Espana was the result of Alfonso X’s effort to portray himself not only as the author of history but as a significant cause. (Dyer) His desire to accomplish this goal by commissioning the compilation of Estoria de Espana ensures that the resulting publication is a pure subjective work and as such is based on his own ideology. As Dyer observes in order ‘to relate a reign,  Alfonso  must manipulate sources, limiting and subsuming parts of the human side of the ruler's life to those features felt to have affected the course of history.’ (Dyer) There are three salient factors associated with historical discourse reflected in Estoria de Espana capable of substantiating Barthes’ claim that it is essentially a product of ideology. First and foremost, ‘history is concerned with individual events and courses of events for their own sake, not in order to derive general laws form them. (it is “ideographic” rather that “nometheic”)’. (Carr) In the second place in order to relate these events one has to have a significant appreciation for the subjectivity of the messenger whose task it is to ‘relate external events to their external causes (“understanding” versus “explanation”)’ (Carr) In the third place, attempting to accomplish the first two objectives requires reducing the material to ‘narrative form, i.e., to tell stories about them.’ (Carr) It is the very essence of this ‘story telling’ that influences theorists like Barthes to maintain that historical discourse is essentially a product of ideology. It involves the interpretation of data from one source to another and in order to accomplish this the intention and the subjective feelings of the originator and the translator is crucial to a full understanding of the resulting text. Like all narratives, the story does not unfold without input from the narrator and by this method it is not told objectively. As Carr explains, ‘history may be obeying not aesthetic but political or ideological rules…history often clothes itself in the authority of an academic discipline claiming to tell us the truth about the past, to be not fiction but fact. But as narrative, according to these authors, it can no longer uphold this claim. History must, at the very least, be recognized as a mixture of fiction and fact. Indeed, it seems that the whole distinction between fiction and non-fiction must be questioned.’ (Carr) In a telling examination of Estoria de Espana, Professor Charles Fraker puts the ideological structure of historical discourse in prospective. Acknowledging that the work does start out conservatively enough, the gradual manipulations by Alfonso X become increasingly obvious. He points out that ‘the Alfonsine committee was at some moments perfectly content to leave well enough alone, that their first impulse was not always to manipulate, accommodate or otherwise alter their source materials, or in some way force them into a new mold.’(Fraker) The original message was somehow altered as a result of a number or influences. The language used in the composition of Estoria de Espana was Castilian a language which when compared to Latin was by and large in its infancy. Most of the originating data would have been in Latin and the Castilian scribest and scholars were assigned the task of transcribing and retelling this data. Moreover, a great part of Estoria de Espana fell to be rewritten and approved by Alfonso X and the entire work would have been reviewed by editors. The result is as Fraker observes ‘that any of the passages..has a very different look and feel from those of its originals.’ (Fraker) Fraker directs attention to a particular passage contained in Estoria de Espana which highlights the battle between Pompey and Julius Caesar. This historical discourse makes a point of dictating a particular conclusion driven by the influences that manipulated the final version. The underlying concept forces a conclusion that is not factual but opinionated. That is ‘that the root cause of the war is the envy of Caesar for his son-in-law.’ (Fraker) There is a poignant emphasis on Pompey’s victories. ‘The point in all these pieces on the honors bestowed Pompey, obviously, is to sustain the theme of Caesar’s envy: the latter becomes verisimilar as we imagine him witnessing the phenomenal success and popularity of his son-in-law.’ (Fraker) Fraker concludes that it is obvious that the editorial committee of Estoria de Espana modified the original text and skillfully embroidered the resulting material to form an ordered structure. The result is material that is markedly distinguishable from its original source. Older material is pasted together telling a different story than the one originally crafted. The final compilation is subjective in that the editors retain the authority to include and amplify themes that are important to them.(Fraker) While one might argue that this method of editing is tantamount to indoctrination it is equally obvious that Estoria de Espana is a product of ideology. In Estoria de Espana as in any other historical discourse the authors employs imagery so as to place the events in context. It sets the scene and invites the reader to absorb the events with his or her senses. Fraker demonstrates the use of imagery in Estoria de Espana by drawing attention to the ‘Punic War narrative’ contained in the final version. (Fraker) According to Fraker, what is evident is ‘the emphasizing of a theme, the bringing of special focus.’ (Fraker) Fraker points out that ‘the Alfonsines perform major surgery on this chapter. In a completely new passage we read of a taking of accounts: Rome is destitute in three areas, able-bodied men, sufficient arms and money to carry on the war. Scipio (Roman political figure) at this unhappy moment is the man to respond to the crisis.’(Fraker) Roland Barthes explains that historical discourse is what amounts to ‘a double operation.’(Barthes) It involves ‘what we might call shifters of listening’ and ‘the transition from the utterance to the act of uttering.’(Barthes) The shifter takes his information from one source and retells it in his way. There is no arguing the art of shifting in the compilation of Estoria de Espana. The utterance is the method employed in retelling.(Barthes) What makes historical discourse a product of ideology is that its final telling ‘is detached from the discourse, becomes external to it, its founding and governing principle: this is the point of the res gestae, when the discourse offers itself quite simply as historia rerum gestarum.’ (Barthes) Moreover ‘the referent enters into a direct relation with the signifier, and the discourse, solely charged with expressing the real, believes itself authorized to dispense with the fundamental term in imaginary structures, which is the signified.’(Barthes) The subsequent material reflects an amalgamation of fact and fiction to a certain extent. Barthes emphasizes that ‘We could say that historical discourse is a fudged up performative, which what appears as statement (and description) is in fact no more than the signifier of the speech act as an act of authority.’ (Barthes) He goes on to add that ‘in 'objective' history, the 'real' is never more than an unformulated signified, sheltering behind the apparently all-powerful referent.’(Barthes) Barthes refers to this aspect of historical discourse as the ‘realistic effect’. (Barthes) In Estoria de Espana this theme was undermined and lends itself to Barthes’ claim that historical discourse is essentially a product of ideology. What happens in the attempt at accomplishing ‘the realistic effect’ as happened in Estoria de Espana is the realistic effect ‘is eliminated from the 'objective' discourse, and ostensibly allows the 'real' and its expression to come together, and this succeeds in establishing a new meaning, on the infallible principle already stated that any deficiency of elements in a system is in its' significant. This new meaning - which extends to the whole of historical discourse and is its ultimately distinctive property - is the real in itself surreptitiously transformed into a sheepish signified.’(Barthes) The very nature of ‘historical discourse does not follow the real.’ (Barthes) Roland Barthes maintains that the most that can be accomplished by historical discourse is that ‘it can do no more than signify the real, constantly repeating that it happened, without this assertion amounting to anything but the signified 'other side' of the whole process of historical narration.’(Barthes) As demonstrated in Estoria de Espana the final message is no more than a rendition that certain events took place in Spain throughout its history and the different approaches modified the significance of the events subjectively and injected feelings and thoughts that were those of the editorial committee. At the end of the day it is difficult to distinguish between fact and opinion. Conclusion Estoria de Espana as a historical discourse epitomizes Roland Barthes’ contention that this form of narrative is essentially a product of ideology. The work does not simply string together data in a purely scientific way. This is perhaps true for any work purporting to represent a historical discourse. One merely only has to examine the structure of Estoria de Espana. It was a compilation of Latin data, translated by Scribes and scholars, edited by an editorial committee and further subjected to scrutiny and approval by a committee headed by the monarchy. As Barthes observed one only has to look ‘at its structure and without having to invoke the substance of its content, historical discourse is in its essence a form of ideological elaboration, or to put it more precisely, an imaginary elaboration, if we can take the imaginary to be the language through which the utterer of a discourse (a purely linguistic entity) 'fills out' the place of subject of the utterance (a psychological or ideological entity).’ Historical discourse is typically subjective. It is woven together in much the same manner as fiction in narrative form. As such historians not only use their own imagination in reconstructing historical events, they inject feelings that are primarily influenced by their own experiences and attempt to place them in a time and place that is by and large alien to them. It is difficult to accomplish this goal without essentially producing a chronology of events that is free of ideology. This observation does not mean that historical discourse is not successful. Carr cautions that ‘far from standing in the way of historical truth, these are appropriate means for achieving it. The reason for this, I have tried to argue here, is that they derive from the very structure of historical reality and from the nature of human time.’(Carr) This is an inescapable conclusion Works Cited Barthes, Roland. (Edited by Stephen Bann) The Discourse of History. (1981) http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/barthes.htm Viewed February 1 2007 Carr, David. History, Fiction and Human Time. http://cohesion.rice.edu/humanities/csc/conferences.cfm?doc_id=350 Viewed January 31 2007 Deyermond, Alan D. History of Spanish Literature, vol. 1: The Average Age. Ariel (2001) Dyer, Nancy Joe. Alfonsine Historiography: The Literary Narrative. http://libro.uca.edu/alfonso10/emperor10.htm Viewed January 31 2007 Fraker, Charles, F. How Original was Estonia de Espana? Problems of Translation and Others. http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1990/Spanish-html/FRAKER,CHARLES.htm#_ftn1 Viewed February 1, 2007 Weller, Celia E. Richmond. PhD. Spanish Literature http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761575679_8/Spanish_Literature.html Viewed January 31, 2007 White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. (1987) John Hopkins University Press Read More