Download or read book Letters Literacy and Literature in Byzantium written by Margaret Mullett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-09 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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: that there was no literary public, or that Byzantium had no drama or humour, but Byzantine texts are now read as literature in the social context of literacy and book culture. One genre is treated here more fully: the letter (Derrida said that letters represent all literature). In these studies epistolography is examined from the point of view of genre, of originality, of communication and as evidence for political history. Other genres touched on include the novel, historiography, parainesis, panegyric, and hagiography. The section on literary process includes essays on genre, patronage and rhetoric, and the section on literacy practices deals with both writing and reading. The collection includes one unpublished lecture which acts as introduction, and additional notes and comments.
Download or read book Theophylact of Ochrid written by Margaret Mullett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few works exist on Byzantine literature as literature and still fewer studies of individual texts. This reading of the letter-collection (c.1090-c.1110) of Theophylact of Ochrid employs a variety of approaches to characterise a work which is both a literary artefact in a long Greek tradition and the only trace of a complex network of friends, colleagues, patrons and clients within Byzantine Bulgaria and also within the empire as a whole. These letters are of great importance from the point of view of local economic or ecclesiastical history, relations with the Slavs, the arrival of the First Crusade, but have not hitherto been studied as an example of Byzantine letter writing. This was a genre taken seriously by Byzantines, offering us unique insight into the mentality of the Byzantine elite, but also into what the Byzantines regarded as literature. This book is important as an attempt to raise the status of the study of Byzantine literature, and of letters within that literature. It is a first attempt to place an epistolary text in a succession of literary and historical contexts; its aim, too, is to probe the reliability of any rhetorical text for straightforward biography especially at the time of the revival fiction in Byzantium. At the heart of the book is an analysis of the personal network of Theophylact, as presented in the collection, with further methodological discussion of network analysis in medieval texts.
Download or read book A Companion to Byzantine Epistolography written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-06-22 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Byzantine Epistolography offers the first comprehensive introduction and scholarly guide to the cultural practice and literary genre of letter-writing in the Byzantine Empire.
Download or read book The Author in Middle Byzantine Literature written by Aglae Pizzone and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-10-24 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author and authorship have become increasingly important concepts in Byzantine literary studies. This volume provides the first comprehensive survey on strategies of authorship in Middle Byzantine literature and investigates the interaction between self-presentation and cultural production in a wide array of genres, providing new insights into how Byzantine intellectuals conceived of their own work and pursuits.
Download or read book History Language and Literacy in the Byzantine World written by Robert Browning and published by Variorum Publishing. This book was released on 1989 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Literacy Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond written by Catherine Holmes and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volumes consider literacy, education and manuscript transmission in Byzantium and its neighbouring worlds, areas which to date have received surprisingly little sustained scholarly treatment among Byzantinists. Contributions include an overview, survey papers and individual case studies, many of which draw on recently discovered or rarely consulted sources: literary sources include astrological texts, saints' lives and florilegia as well as documentary texts, art and archaeological evidence. The contributors' fields reflect the interdisciplinary scope of this volume, covering history, art history, literary studies and palaeography. The volume looks in detail at Byzantium, but also includes papers on Rus, the Middle East, and the Jewish contribution. The book's eastern perspectives offer interesting comparisons and contrasts with the medieval West. The book is illustrated with plates showing illuminated manuscripts and archaeological artefacts. The contributors are Paul Botley, Simon Franklin, Catherine Holmes, Erica Hunter, John Lowden, Paul Magdalino, Margaret Mullett, Stefan Reif, Charlotte Roueche, Natalie Tchernetska, and Judith Waring.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature written by Stratis Papaioannou and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, the first ever of its kind in English, introduces and surveys Greek literature in Byzantium (330 - 1453 CE). In twenty-five chapters composed by leading specialists, The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature surveys the immense body of Greek literature produced from the fourth to the fifteenth century CE and advances a nuanced understanding of what "literature" was in Byzantium. This volume is structured in four sections. The first, "Materials, Norms, Codes," presents basic structures for understanding the history of Byzantine literature like language, manuscript book culture, theories of literature, and systems of textual memory. The second, "Forms," deals with the how Byzantine literature works: oral discourse and "text"; storytelling; rhetoric; re-writing; verse; and song. The third section ("Agents") focuses on the creators of Byzantine literature, both its producers and its recipients. The final section, entitled "Translation, Transmission, Edition," surveys the three main ways by which we access Byzantine Greek literature today: translations into other Byzantine languages during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages; Byzantine and post-Byzantine manuscripts; and modern printed editions. The volume concludes with an essay that offers a view of the recent past--as well as the likely future--of Byzantine literary studies.
Download or read book Holiness on the Move Mobility and Space in Byzantine Hagiography written by Mihail Mitrea and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holiness on the Move: Mobility and Space in Byzantine Hagiography explores the literary, religious, and social functions of monastic mobility in Byzantine hagiography, touching on aspects of space, narrative, and identity. The ten chapters included in this volume highlight the multifaceted and rich nature of travel narratives, exploring topics such as authorship and audience, narrative structure and function, identity-making and practicalities of and discourse on travel. In terms of geographical span, the case studies cover Constantinople and its hinterland, Asia Minor, mainland Greece, Trebizond, the Balkans, and southern Italy and range chronologically from the end of the sixth to the fourteenth century. The contributions offer novel insights and perspectives on the importance of mobility in the literary construction of holiness in the Byzantine world and the wider medieval Mediterranean, the spatial dimension of sacred mobility, and the ways in which mobility is employed in the narrative construction of hagiographical texts. As such, the volume joins the burgeoning research on sacred mobilities and will interest students and scholars of Byzantine and medieval literature, religion, and history, as well as a wider readership with an interest in the study of space and mobility.
Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography written by Stephanos Efthymiadis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For an entire millennium, Byzantine hagiography, inspired by the veneration of many saints, exhibited literary dynamism and a capacity to vary its basic forms. The subgenres into which it branched out after its remarkable start in the fourth century underwent alternating phases of development and decline that were intertwined with changes in the political, social and literary spheres. The selection of saintly heroes, an interest in depicting social landscapes, and the modulation of linguistic and stylistic registers captured the voice of homo byzantinus down to the end of the empire in the fifteenth century. The seventeen chapters in this companion form the sequel to those in volume I which dealt with the periods and regions of Byzantine hagiography, and complete the first comprehensive survey ever produced in this field. The book is the work of an international group of experts in the field and is addressed to both a broader public and the scholarly community of Byzantinists, medievalists, historians of religion and theorists of narrative. It highlights the literary dimension and the research potential of a representative number of texts, not only those appreciated by the Byzantines themselves but those which modern readers rank high due to their literary quality or historical relevance.
Download or read book Writer and Occasion in Twelfth Century Byzantium written by Ingela Nilsson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive study of occasional writing in Byzantium, focusing on the literary output of Constantine Manasses.
Download or read book After the Text written by Liz James and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Text honours the work of renowned historian Margaret Mullett, who since the 1970s has transformed the study of Byzantine literature. Her work has been influential in demonstrating the strength and variety of Byzantine texts. Byzantium is renowned for its achievements in architecture and the visual arts. Byzantium is renowned for its achievements in architecture and the visual arts. Professor Mullett's perceptive studies, produced over more than 40 years, have shown that the literature of the Byzantine Empire is of equal beauty and interest, ranging, as it does, from high-style poetry and rhetoric in the classical manner through letters to demotic writings such as fables and the lives of saints. The collection of essays in this volume draws further attention to the wealth and diversity of Byzantine texts, by exploring the Greek literature of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in all its variety. These studies, by going, like Professor Mullett herself, beyond the texts, illustrate the value of Byzantine literature for interpreting Byzantine history and civilisation in all its richness. This book is crucial reading for scholars and students of the Byzantine world, as well as for those interested in literary studies. Chapter 16 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Download or read book The Letters of Psellos written by Michael Jeffreys and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Letters of Psellos is the first detailed study of the correspondence of Michael Psellos, a leading Byzantine intellectual, politician, and writer of the eleventh century. Psellos' corpus of over 500 letters represents a historical source of great significance for the study of society and culture of the time: literary masterpieces in and of themselves, yet often complex and difficult to understand in their entirety, they not only rebound with subtlety and humor, but also offer invaluable information on myriad subjects ranging from the political culture of Byzantium and its civil administration to social codes, religious beliefs, and popular culture. This volume consists of two complementary parts designed to make Psellos' letters as widely accessible as possible, both to the specialist academic community and to a wider non-specialist audience. The first part contains five essays offering detailed historical and literary analyses of a considerable number of the letters across a range of different topics, including the financial management of monasteries, the friendship of Psellos and John Mauropous, and the challenges posed by Psellian irony. While the essays are supplemented by individual appendices containing the translated text of the pertinent letters, the second part of the book presents annotated summaries in English of the entirety of Psellos' correspondence, compiled over many years as part of the Prosopography of the Byzantine World project and supported by substantial excursuses and notes. The result is an engaging and accessible shortcut into these bewildering and fascinating letters and an essential resource for the study of eleventh-century Byzantine society and culture through the pen of one of its pre-eminent figures.
Download or read book A Companion to Byzantium written by Liz James and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-01-29 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using new methodological and theoretical approaches, A Companionto Byzantium presents an overview of the Byzantine world fromits inception in 330 A.D. to its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Provides an accessible overview of eleven centuries ofByzantine society Introduces the most recent scholarship that is transforming thefield of Byzantine studies Emphasizes Byzantium's social and cultural history, as well asits material culture Explores traditional topics and themes through freshperspectives
Download or read book The Byzantine World written by Paul Stephenson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 863 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Byzantine World presents the latest insights of the leading scholars in the fields of Byzantine studies, history, art and architectural history, literature, and theology. Those who know little of Byzantine history, culture and civilization between AD 700 and 1453 will find overviews and distillations, while those who know much already will be afforded countless new vistas. Each chapter offers an innovative approach to a well-known topic or a diversion from a well-trodden path. Readers will be introduced to Byzantine women and children, men and eunuchs, emperors, patriarchs, aristocrats and slaves. They will explore churches and fortifications, monasteries and palaces, from Constantinople to Cyprus and Syria in the east, and to Apulia and Venice in the west. Secular and sacred art, profane and spiritual literature will be revealed to the reader, who will be encouraged to read, see, smell and touch. The worlds of Byzantine ceremonial and sanctity, liturgy and letters, Orthodoxy and heresy will be explored, by both leading and innovative international scholars. Ultimately, readers will find insights into the emergence of modern Byzantine studies and of popular Byzantine history that are informative, novel and unexpected, and that provide a thorough understanding of both.
Download or read book The Author in Middle Byzantine Literature written by Aglae M. V. Pizzone and published by ISSN. This book was released on 2014 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author and authorship have become increasingly important concepts in Byzantine literary studies. This volume provides the first comprehensive survey on strategies of authorship in Middle Byzantine literature and investigates the interaction between self-presentation and cultural production in a wide array of genres, providing new insights into how Byzantine intellectuals conceived of their own work and pursuits.
Download or read book Celibate Marriages in Late Antique and Byzantine Hagiography written by Anne P. Alwis and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the phenomenon of celibate marriages in Byzantine hagiography.
Download or read book The Byzantine Empire 2 volumes written by James Francis LePree Ph.D. and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-09-09 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indispensable resource for investigating the history of the Byzantine Empire, this book provides a comprehensive summary of its overall development as well as its legacy in the modern world. The existence and development of Byzantium covers more than a millennium and coincides with one of the darkest periods of European history. Unfortunately, the Empire's achievements and brightest moments remain largely unknown except to Byzantine scholars. Through reference entries and primary source documents, this encyclopedia provides essential information about the Byzantine Empire from the reign of Diocletian to the Fall of Constantinople. The reference entries are grouped in eight topical sections on the most significant aspects of the history of the Byzantine Empire. These sections include individuals, key events, key places, the military, objects and artifacts, administration and organization, government and politics, and groups and organizations. Each section begins with an overview essay and contains approximately thirty entries on carefully selected topics. The entries conclude with suggestions for further reading along with cross-references., A selection of primary source documents gives readers first-hand accounts of the Byzantine world.
