Style and fictionalisation in eyewitness personal accounts of the Thirty Years War

Eyewitness personal accounts of the Thirty Years War are of interest not on ly for their overt content, but as examples of how the process of writing i tself can shape both the resultant text and the meaning derivable from it b y the reader. Techniques adopted, probably unconsciously, by writers seekin g to give force and point to their narratives, here collectively termed 'fi ctionalisation', add to well-known problems of eyewitness testimony to affe ct the historical evaluation of such sources. 'Natural narrative' style, ak in to oral story-telling, leads many of these authors - and their readers - to focus on one or a series of lively and anecdotal stories, often at the expense of the overall perspective. In other cases, more structured narrati ve accounts likewise suggest selection and ordering of the material in orde r to create the desired impression, possibly at the expense of strict repre sentational accuracy.