416 Pages
by
Routledge
414 Pages
by
Routledge
416 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
These studies look at general problems of reading Byzantine literature, at literacy practices and the literary process, but also at individual texts. The past thirty years have seen a revolution in the way Byzantine literature has been viewed: no longer is it considered a decadent form of classical literature or a turgid precursor of modern Greek literature. There are still prejudices to overcome:... Read more
Contents: Preface; 25 years of Byzantine letters, literacy and literature. Part 1 Letters: The classical tradition in the Byzantine letter; The language of diplomacy; Originality in the Byzantine letter: the case of exile; 1098 and all that: Theophylact bishop of Semnea and the Alexian reconquest of Anatolia. Part 2 Literary Practices: Writing in early medieval Byzantium; Food for the spirit and a light for the road: reading the Bible in the Life of Cyril Phileotes. Part 3 The Literary Process: Aristocracy and patronage in the literary circles of Comnenian Constantinople;The madness of genre; Rhetoric, theory and the imperative of performance: Byzantium and now; Novelisation in Byzantium: narrative after the revival of fiction. Part 4 Literary Texts: Alexios I Komnenos and imperial renewal; The imperial vocabulary of Alexios I Komnenos; In peril on the sea: travel genres and the unexpected; Literary biography and historical genre in the Life of Cyril Phileotes by Nicholas Kataskepenos. Part 5 Literature: Dancing with deconstructionists in the gardens of the Muses: new literary history vs ?; New literary history and the history of Byzantine literature: a worthwhile endeavour?; Additional notes and comments; Errata; Index.
Biography
Professor Margaret Mullett is Director of the Institute of Byzantine Studies, and of the AHRB Centre for Byzantine Cultural History, at the Queen's University Belfast, UK.
