Generaciones y semblanzas: Memory and Genealogy in Medieval Iberian Historiography (Romanica Monacensia)

An analysis of Fernan Pérez de Guzman's Generaciones y semblanzas

Scholarship has celebrated Fernan Pérez de Guzman's Generaciones y semblanzas as a forerunner of modern biography and as a sober piece of trustworthy historiography. Silhouetting the text against medieval horizons of expectations, Robert Folger argues that semblanzas take the shape of blueprints for the formation of mnemonic images. He traces the intricate intertextual web with the nodal point Generaciones, reconstructing the dominant pragmatic orientation toward preserving aristocratic memory. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of Generaciones, Folger pinpoints the emergence of semblanzas in the earliest testimonies of vernacular Iberian historiography and follows their evolution until the end of the 15th century.