Download or read book Witness Literature in Byzantium written by Adam J. Goldwyn and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "By turns reflexive and daring, Goldwyn's book is riskful thinking at its best. For medievalists, it opens up new possibilities for reading and teaching the works that matter to us most -- those that somehow place us face-to-face with human Others and leave us feeling more than we can express. In Goldwyn's book, the face of the human Other presents itself, even if only briefly and in a moment of mortal danger." - Vincent Barletta, Stanford University, USA "Innovative, illuminating and daring. This theoretically sophisticated book revolutionizes the study of Byzantine literature and enriches our understanding of angst, anxiety and trauma in the middle ages. This book provides an insightful discussion of captivity in the Byzantine era and a new interdisciplinary, trans-historical understanding of narratives which will captivate scholars for years to come." -Elena N. Boeck, DePaul University, USA.
Download or read book Witness Literature in Byzantium written by Adam J. Goldwyn and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-06 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes Byzantine examples of witness literature, a genre that focuses on eyewitness accounts written by slaves, prisoners, refugees, and other victims of historical atrocity. It focuses on such episodes in three nonfictional texts – John Kaminiates’ Capture of Thessaloniki (904), Eustathios of Thessaloniki’s Capture of Thessaloniki (1186), and Niketas Choniates’ History (ca. 1204–17) – and the three extant twelfth-century Komnenian novels to consider how the authors’ positions as both eyewitness and victim require an interpretive method that distinguishes witness literature from other kinds of writing about the past. Drawing on theoretical developments in the fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (such as Giorgio Agamben’s homo sacer and Michel Foucault’s biopolitics) and comparisons with modern examples (Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s If This is a Man), Witness Literature emphasizes the affective, subjective, and experiential in medieval Greek historical writing.
Download or read book Reading the Late Byzantine Romance written by Adam J. Goldwyn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-20 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The corpus of Palaiologan romances consists of about a dozen works of imaginative fiction from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries which narrate the trials and tribulations of aristocratic young lovers. This volume brings together leading scholars of Byzantine literature to examine the corpus afresh and aims to be the definitive work on the subject, suitable for scholars and students of all levels. It offers interdisciplinary and transnational approaches which demonstrate the aesthetic and cultural value of these works in their own right and their centrality to the medieval and early modern Greek, European and Mediterranean literary traditions. From a historical perspective, the volume also emphasizes how the romances represent a turning point in the history of Greek letters: they are a repository of both ancient and medieval oral poetic and novelistic traditions and yet are often considered the earliest works of Modern Greek literature.
Download or read book History as Literature in Byzantium written by Ruth Macrides and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although perceived since the sixteenth century as the most impressive literary achievement of Byzantine culture, historical writing nevertheless remains little studied as literature. Historical texts are still read first and foremost for nuggets of information, as main sources for the reconstruction of the events of Byzantine history. Whatever can be called literary in these works has been considered as external and detachable from the facts. The 'classical tradition' inherited by Byzantine writers, the features that Byzantine authors imitated and absorbed, are regarded as standing in the way of understanding the true meaning of the text and, furthermore, of contaminating the reliability of the history. Chronicles, whose language and style are anything but classicizing, have been held in low esteem, for they are seen as providing a mere chronological exposition of events. This book presents a set of articles by an international cast of contributors, deriving from papers delivered at the 40th annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. They are concerned with historical and visual narratives that date from the sixth to the fourteenth century, and aim to show that literary analyses and the study of pictorial devices, far from being tangential to the study of historical texts, are preliminary to their further study, exposing the deeper structures and purposes of these texts.
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 A Companion to Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers an overview of Byzantine manuscript illustration, a central branch of Byzantine art and culture. Just like written texts, illustrations bear witness to Byzantine material culture, imperial ideology and religious beliefs, as well as to the development and spread of Byzantine art. In this sense illustrated books reflect the society that produced and used them. Being portable, they could serve as diplomatic gifts or could be acquired by foreigners. In such cases they became “emissaries” of Byzantine art and culture in Western Europe and the Arabic world. The volume provides for the first time a comprehensive overview of the material, divided by text categories, including both secular and religious manuscripts, and analyses which texts were illustrated in Byzantium, and how. Contributors are Justine M. Andrews, Leslie Brubaker, Annemarie W. Carr, Elina Dobrynina, Maria Evangelatou, Maria Laura Tomea Gavazzoli, Markos Giannoulis, Cecily Hennessy, Ioli Kalavrezou, Maja Kominko, Sofia Kotzabassi, Stavros Lazaris, Kallirroe Linardou, Vasileios Marinis, Kathleen Maxwell, Georgi R. Parpulov, Nancy P. Ševčenko, Jean-Michel Spieser, Mika Takiguchi, Courtney Tomaselli, Marina Toumpouri, Nicolette S. Trahoulia, Vasiliki Tsamakda, and Elisabeth Yota.
Download or read book Between Constantinople and Rome written by Professor Kathleen Maxwell and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-03-28 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the artistic and political context that led to the production of Bibliothèque Nationale de France, codex grec 54, one of the most ambitious and complex manuscripts of the Byzantine era. Kathleen Maxwell’s multi-disciplinary approach includes codicological and paleographical evidence together with New Testament textual criticism, artistic and historical analysis. She concludes that Paris 54 was designed to eclipse its contemporaries and to physically embody a new relationship between Constantinople and the Latin West.
Download or read book Homer the Rhetorician written by Baukje van den Berg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homer the Rhetorician is the first monograph study devoted to the monumental Commentary on the Iliad by Eustathios of Thessalonike, one of the most renowned orators and teachers of the Byzantine twelfth century. Homeric poetry was a fixture in the Byzantine educational curriculum and enjoyed special popularity under the Komnenian emperors. For Eustathios, Homer was the supreme paradigm of eloquence and wisdom. Writing for an audience of aspiring or practising prose writers, he explains in his commentary what it is that makes Homer's composition so successful in rhetorical terms. This study explores the exemplary qualities that Eustathios recognizes in the poet as author and the Iliad as rhetorical masterpiece. In this way, it advances our understanding of the rhetorical thought of a leading intellectual and the role of a cultural authority as respected as Homer in one of the most fertile periods in Byzantine literary history.
Download or read book Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire written by Marcus Rautman and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2006-03-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life in the Byzantine Empire comes alive in this extraordinary, insightful study ideal for high school students, undergraduates, and general readers interested in answering questions about every day details that truly shaped Byzantine life.
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 Divine Inspiration in Byzantium written by Karin Krause and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Karin Krause examines conceptions of divine inspiration and authenticity in the religious literature and visual arts of Byzantium. During antiquity and the medieval era, “inspiration” encompassed a range of ideas regarding the divine contribution to the creation of holy texts, icons, and other material objects by human beings. Krause traces the origins of the notion of divine inspiration in the Jewish and polytheistic cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds and their reception in Byzantine religious culture. Exploring how conceptions of authenticity are employed in Eastern Orthodox Christianity to claim religious authority, she analyzes texts in a range of genres, as well as images in different media, including manuscript illumination, icons, and mosaics. Her interdisciplinary study demonstrates the pivotal role that claims to the divine inspiration of religious literature and art played in the construction of Byzantine cultural identity.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c 500 1492 written by Jonathan Shepard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 1228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byzantium lasted a thousand years, ruled to the end by self-styled 'emperors of the Romans'. It underwent kaleidoscopic territorial and structural changes, yet recovered repeatedly from disaster: even after the near-impregnable Constantinople fell in 1204, variant forms of the empire reconstituted themselves. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492 tells the story, tracing political and military events, religious controversies and economic change. It offers clear, authoritative chapters on the main events and periods, with more detailed chapters on outlying regions and neighbouring societies and powers of Byzantium. With aids such as maps, a glossary, an alternative place-name table and references to English translations of sources, it will be valuable as an introduction. However, it also offers stimulating new approaches and important findings, making it essential reading for postgraduates and for specialists. The revised paperback edition contains a new preface by the editor and will offer an invaluable companion to survey courses in Byzantine history.
Download or read book Homer Humanism Holocaust written by Adam J. Goldwyn and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how Jewish intellectuals during and after the Second World War reinterpreted Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, in light of their own wartime experiences, drawing a parallel between the ancient Greek genocide of the Trojans and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The wartime writings of Theodore Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, Rachel Bespaloff, Hermann Broch, Max Horkheimer, Primo Levi, and others were attempts both to understand the collapse of European civilization and the Enlightenment through critiques of their foundational texts and to imagine the place of the Homeric epics in a new post-War humanism. The book thus also explores the reception of these writers, analyzing how Jewish child-survivors like Geoffrey Hartman and Hélène Cixous and writers of the post-Holocaust generation like Daniel Mendelsohn continued to read the epics as narratives of grief, trauma, and woundedness into the twenty-first century. .
Download or read book History and Literature of Byzantium in the 9th 10th Centuries written by Athanasios Markopoulos and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The studies reprinted here deal with the Byzantine empire between the 9th and 11th centuries, with a focus on the period of the Macedonian dynasty, and include four translated into English for this volume. They reflect both historical and prosopographical concerns, but Professor Markopoulos's principle interest is in the analysis of literary works and texts. This he combines with the examination of the ideological context of the period, as shaped in the reigns of Basil I and Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, and the investigation of gender issues and other approaches. The close analysis of the texts shows how, after the close of Iconoclasm, new styles of writing and new attitudes towards the writing of history emerged, for instance in the use of mythological themes, which exemplify the changing intellectual concerns of the time.
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 A Companion to Byzantine Poetry written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-06 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first complete survey of the Byzantine poetic production (4th to 15th centuries). It examines the use of poetry in various sociocultural settings in Constantinople and various other centres of the Byzantine empire.
Download or read book Josephus Judaism and Christianity written by Feldman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-20 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
