ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we saw that the accounts are commonly described as ‘entirely devoid of literature’, free of all ‘literary effects’. But what can such assertions mean when an account thus described opens in medias res with the dramatic line: ‘Kratz slowly crossed the deserted, sunny courtyard; as usual, his head was bobbing up and down and he was jingling his keys loudly’ (Renault 1948:19)? The answer lies in part in the fact that ‘not literary’ equates to ‘not fiction’. The ‘truth’ of the accounts is premised on what was ‘seen’ and ‘lived through’ by the author; they are not products of the imagination. This, however, can only be a limited response. As Young points out, an insistence on the absence of the literary and on the importance of the eye-witness are themselves rhetorical moves: there is no such thing as style-less narrative or unmediated fact (1988:8).
