WHiLES · Writing History in Lists, Enumerations, and Successions. How Short Thirteenth-century French Chronicles Shaped the Historical Culture of Late Medieval Elites.

WHiLES examines how short historical texts written in French before the end of the 13th century shaped the historical culture of medieval francophone and francophile elites in late medieval Europe. Unpublished and often dismissed as unworthy of attention by historians and literary scholars, short French chronicles were in fact a crucial medium for transmitting knowledge and promoting ideologically driven representations of the past. For the most part, these texts were translated from Latin and conceived less to be read than to be consulted. They take the form of annalistic enumerations of events, royal successions, genealogical lists of biblical figures, and tabular compendia of popes and emperors. Copied into dozens of manuscript books, they circulated widely, from England to the Near East, across the vast area where French functioned as a lingua franca.WHiLES adopts a philological approach to offer the first comprehensive study of short French chronicles, examining their origins, reception, and circulation in late medieval Europe. The project will produce an exhaustive inventory of these texts and publish the first scholarly and digital editions of twenty chronicles. Reconstructing their manuscript traditions and analysing the collections that preserve them will make it possible to explore their origin and assess their role in the historical culture of late medieval elites. Ultimately, WHiLES will shed light on this significant yet neglected part of French literature and demonstrate how short French chronicles contributed to creating collective memories of the past across Europe.