anna
Anna Komnene
Anna Komnene's Alexiad
Anna Komnene’s Alexiad
Apple Story
Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria
byzantine
Byzantine Historians
Byzantine historiography
Byzantine Literature
Byzantine Narrative
Byzantium
Category=NHAH
Category=NHDJ
choniates
chronike
classical tradition reception
Della
DOP
Dream Narrative
Eagle Stories
Early Byzantine Historians
Ecumenical History
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Greek Alexander Romance
historical text interpretation
historiography
komnene
Leo III
literary analysis medieval
literary approaches to Byzantine chronicles
madrid
Madrid Skylitzes
Michael Psellos
narrative structures Byzantium
Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos
niketas
Niketas Choniates
skylitzes
Symeon Metaphrastes
synopsis
Synopsis Chronike
Theodore Daphnopates
visual storytelling analysis
Vita Basilii
Product details
- ISBN 9781409412069
- Weight: 816g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Dec 2010
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
Ruth Macrides is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies in the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham, UK
