SOURCE: Shichtman, Martin B. “Gawain in Wace and Laȝamon: A Case of Metahistorical Evolution.” In Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, pp. 103-19. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Shichtman contrasts the way Wace and Layamon portray Sir Gawain and narrate his history, and argues that the difference in their approaches is the result of their disimilarities in class, location, and historical perspective.

Among historians who see the ultimate goal of historical discourse as the conveyance of “truth,” historical writings of the Middle Ages have been often found suspect, even ignored, because of their tendency toward literariness.¹ Contemporary historiographical theory argues, however, that the search for objective historical truth is a delusion. Historical writing is, it suggests, subject to the same forces that give form to all narrative. This position, with its insistence that, in Hayden White's words, “historical inquiry is born less of...