The Tradition of Regional Vernacular History

The Grandes Chroniques was only one of many vernacular prose histories that appeared in France in the early thirteenth century.^[13] Precursors of the Grandes Chroniques , such as the Pseudo-Turpin chronicle (c. 1200–30), the chronicle of the Anonymous of Chantilly (c. 1210—30), the Chronique des rois de France by the Anonymous of Béthune (before 1223), and the Abrégé de l'histoire de France of the Ménestrel of Alphonse of Poitiers (before 1260), were regional or national histories written specifically for a lay audience ignorant of Latin.^[14] They served purposes different from those of the Latin universal chronicles favored by monastic audiences or the chansons de geste of the nobility.

Authors of the earliest vernacular histories emulated existing genres of French literature such as the epic.^[15] In the thirteenth century, however, they consciously changed the narrative structure of vernacular history, distancing it from that of the epic, to give more credibility to the stories recounted in the chronicle.^[16] In the process, historiographers forged a new French literary language to convey a "literature of fact."^[17]

Among the early French histories, the Grandes Chroniques de France is the preeminent example of this "literature of fact." Adapting the language and form of vernacular history, Primat translated the Latin chronicles preserved at the abbey of Saint-Denis in the 1270s and drew upon contemporary French histories such as the Anonymous of Chantilly's Chronique des rois de France and the Ménestrel of Alphonse of Poitiers's Abrégé de l'histoire de France to write a royal history that displaced earlier examples of the genre by the early fourteenth century.^[18]

The Grandes Chroniques was written near Paris, the seat of French government, for a Parisian audience consisting of the king and those who worked closely with him. Unlike such vernacular histories as the French Pseudo-Turpin chronicle, whose origins in northern France and Flanders were noble and perhaps antiroyal,^[19] the Grandes Chroniques is a quintessentially royalist text. It is therefore a good vehicle for studying the creation and development of the royal image in court circles between the late thirteenth and the early fifteenth centuries.