So the knight spoke. Afterward he turned to me again and said, “you already know the rest, how you and I consulted together, fought, and triumphed.”
“On that day,” I said, “the saint gave a grand sign: while there were many there with polished wit, they left conquered by those few with less polish.” Then, seeing those who were present, I presented to them in words what I now produce in letters.48
The ubiquity and familiarity of personal stories can make them seem rather simple. The recitation of Beowulf by bards, the singing of ballads in the streets of medieval Paris, the fama or oral reputation that mattered so much in medieval law courts, the stories of sprouting oars and flowering staffs—this all feels exotic and complex, and has received substantial study from scholars.49 In contrast, personal stories can seem so straightforward, so reflective of experience itself, that it can appear there is nothing that particularly needs analysis. Scholars have usually assumed that the oral stories miracle collectors heard reflected reality quite closely, and that what needs attention is how collectors would have twisted and shaped these accounts to their own ends. But researchers in the social sciences have found that personal narratives are quite complex constructions—that they are more difficult to analyze, in many respects, than folktales.50 These researchers particularly stress the danger of failing to distinguish between a person’s lived experience and an oral story of that experience. Rom Harré comments, for instance, that “the telling of tales is more readily researchable than the living of lives.”51
Three contexts are essential for decoding the meaning of a personal story: the creator’s own personality and sense of himself or herself; the circumstances in which the story is articulated—place, audience, timing, and so on; and the oral and physical dimensions of the story’s telling.52 This is the kind of data we gauge automatically, often unthinkingly, when we hear and evaluate personal stories from people we know well. But without it, personal stories become extremely hard to dissect, harder, in fact, than stories—like that of the blossoming oar—with less personal content.53 Even with the richness of Osbern’s retelling of the knight of Thanet’s story, it is difficult to probe far into its meaning. We might be able to find out more about the abbot of St. Augustine’s, or inheritance law, or the number of knights on the isle of Thanet, or the position of Dunstan’s tomb in the cathedral, but this information is peripheral to the meaning of the knight’s story. The essential problem with analyzing a narrative like the knight of Thanet’s story at this distance is that we know so little about him. Osbern must have had a sense of what the knight’s inheritance entailed. How much did he need it? Did he have any previous dealings, good or bad, with the abbot of St. Augustine’s? Were other members of the family disputing the inheritance? A personal story is best grasped by someone who has known the teller for years, someone who can place a personal story in the context of others. Did the knight normally tell stories about his anxieties or his dreams? Had he told a story about a miracle before, or was this his first one? In the knight’s personal history, would this story rank its own chapter, or just a footnote? What did the knight’s wife, if he had one, think about all this?
One could multiply these questions, and ask them about any of the personal stories preserved in miracle collections. To catch the full resonance of the knight’s story, we would need to know more than this, however—we would also need to know more about the knight’s relationship with Osbern. The knight and Osbern appear to have been alone as the knight told his story. The two were well acquainted with each other. Not only had they had conversations before this particular walk on the beach, but Osbern had been personally involved in the knight’s lawsuit with the abbot of St. Augustine’s. It also appears that Osbern took the lead in this friendship. He came to talk with the knight at his special request and looks to have been directing the conversation where he wanted it to go. These kinds of things make an enormous difference in how a personal story is told, how it is received, and the meaning it conveys. So much eludes us, though. Did Osbern go to Thanet solely to meet with the knight, or did he have other business there? How did these two come to know each other? Who was the older? Trading personal stories is one of the chief ways people forge bonds with each other: as Sandra Dolby Stahl has commented, “the exchange of personal narratives [is] an emotionally satisfying experience for both the teller and audience…. This intimacy is more marked in the exchange of personal narratives than in other kinds of storytelling.”54 By telling Osbern his story, the knight exposed his anxieties, his dreams, his interpretations, and ultimately himself. Did the friendship between Osbern and the knight change after this story was told?
The specifics of how this all played out are beyond our reach. The complexities of oral performance present yet more difficulties. Personal stories are constructed through the voice, facial expressions, and body language of the teller as much as in the sense of the words. This is the case with the oral delivery of any kind of story, of course, but the stakes are heightened considerably with the personal narrative, stories of the self told by the self. Osbern gives us a few clues, writing that the knight “paled” and “breathed heavily” at the beginning of his story. But did the knight remain pale, or did he perk up? Did he speed up in certain places, slow down in others, speak more loudly, more softly? Did he pause, backtrack, misspeak? Personal stories root themselves in the self in ways even the teller might not grasp. We effortlessly absorb and process these nonverbal cues when we listen and see other people telling their stories, cues that may well contradict the meaning of the words being spoken. Though it is almost all gone now for the stories in miracle collections, we must try to imagine those flesh and blood speakers, to think of the expressions shifting across faces, eyes making contact or looking to the side, shrugging shoulders, sighs, gestures, hesitations—and how all of this invigorated and shaped the meaning of personal stories as they were being told.
To gain a full picture of the telling of these stories, we also have to account for the reaction of listeners. The relationship between teller and audience in the telling of a personal story is a particularly active one. An encouraging question, a comment, a grimace, or a glance away—all these can invigorate, redirect, or halt the telling of a personal story. Personal stories exist in the moment, rarely if ever told the same way twice. Tellers adjust them, sometimes radically, depending on who is listening and how they respond. Osbern gives us a taste of the kind of conversational give and take that most personal stories involve, but again there is so much that we don’t know. Was Osbern rapt during the whole of the knight’s story? How might the knight of Thanet have told his story later or to another companion? Since the meaning of personal stories is so deeply embedded in personalities, relationships, and oral performance, even the most carefully composed texts will fail to convey their complexity.55 Osbern’s textual rendering inevitably deadens and radically simplifies the knight’s story. Still, the power of the personal story is such that even in this severely muted form the reader can feel its pull. Reading this story invites a sense of intimacy with the knight beyond what one would feel, for instance, from reading a charter issued by him.
It also invites a sense of intimacy with the saint at the center of the story. A triumph over an enemy is a common narrative trajectory for a personal story. What makes the knight’s victory in his lawsuit a miracle story is the credit he gives to Dunstan for his success. The knight could have claimed that it was Osbern’s help, or his own skill or luck, that achieved that result. Instead, he links his prayer, his dream, and his success together: Dunstan won the case for him. Dunstan, though dead, becomes the actor at the center of the story, as real a persona as the knight himself. Today, miracles tend to be envisioned in theoretical and nonfigurative terms: a miracle is a breaking of the laws of nature. Most stories in miracle collections have a much more particularized flavor. Dunstan was here. Dunstan helped me. That’s why I won my lawsuit, why I felt better after being sick, why my daughter was saved after falling into the river. Saints might not always be seen or sensed, but they live out posthumous lives in which they continue to care about