Narrators of Barbarian History (a.D. 550–800), the

Walter Goffart is professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto and Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer in History at Yale University.

"This is a very good book . . . full of freshness, imagination, and learning. . . . [Goffart has produced] a wealth of original arguments and insights that will succeed in permanently disturbing the old complacency." —American Historical Review"As with everything Professor Goffart writes, this book is stimulating and provocative. There is much of interest in the detailed studies of the four writers presented here." —English Historical Review". . . a work which will both provoke much discussion of its central ideas and be widely consulted as a standard source of reference for the writers with whom it deals." —Church History"This book will be extremely valuable for those wishing to understand any of its four narrators. In addition to its exciting approach, it is a masterpiece of scholarship, magnificently and precisely noted." —Speculum"The Narrators of Barbarian History should become essential reading for all early medievalists." —History"A work of considerable importance. [Goffart's] insistence that these Dark Age historians were literary figures, who had specific goals in mind, and moulded their narratives to suit their ends, is crucial. So too is the notion that the works by these historians, and not the information they contain, are our real incontrovertible 'facts.' . . . His thesis ought radically to transform our approach to the early middle ages." —Canadian Journal of History