This paper examines the Histories of Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594 CE). In The Poetics of Biblical Narrative, Meir Sternberg outlines a method of interpretation useful for approaching a literary artifact whose self-classification is history, identifying three principles operating interdependently within any narrative work: the ideological, the historiographical, and the aesthetic. These principles produce a complex network of linkages which make up the narrative as a mode of communication. Using Sternberg’s model as an instrument of interpretation, this analysis identifies narrative devices as functional structures for the Decem Libri Historiarum, such as intentional gaps, repetitions, and time manipulations.

A b s t r a c t: Historians dealing with the period of the early Middle Ages do not hold a high opinion of Gesalic, the king of the Visigoths. Gesalic is blamed for the defeats they suffered in the war against the Franks and the Burgundians in 507/08–11. Modern historians' opinions are based mainly on the work of Isidore of Seville who described Gesalic as a coward and a ruler deprived of luck (felicitas). In this article I argue that to pass an accurate judgment on the king it is necessary to take into account the real politico-military situation of the Visigothic kingdom in the years 508–11. K e y w o r d s: Gesalic, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Theoderic the Great, felicitas, ignavia.