The German epic, "Niebelungenlied," and Bruni's "History of the Florentine People" are, respectively, an unselfconsciously
fictional work and a self-consciously nonfictional work of historical literature. Both tell tales of nation-founding in completely
different genres. This paper shows, however, that fiction and
nonfiction were not always the rigorously divided categories they are in media constructions today. This flexibility between fiction and nonfiction, history and myth, was true when Bruni authored his early Renaissance chronicle of the city and people of Florence, and the "Niebelungenlied" was constructed at a date historians of the Austrian and Germanic provinces tenuously date to the 12th century. The paper shows that both works have clear ideological agendas, despite their different factual genres.