Includes bibliographical references (pages 638-707) and index.
Contents:
Byzantium : a bookish world / Teresa Shawcross -- Modern encounters with Byzantine texts and their reading publics / Ida Toth -- John Mauropous and the benefits of reading / Marina Bazzani -- The autobiographies of the Patriarch Gennadios II Scholarios / Michael Angold -- The role of the speeches of John the Oxite in Komnenian court politics / Judith R. Ryder -- The liturgical poetics of an elite religious confraternity / Paul Magdalino -- Manuscript notes and the Black Death in rural Cyprus / Tassos Papacostas -- Ancient Greek rhetorical theory and Byzantine discursive politics : John Sikeliotes on Hermogenes / Panagiotis Roilos -- Memoirs as manifesto : the rhetoric of Katakalon Kekaumenos / Jonathan Shepard -- Performative reading in the late Byzantine Theatron / Niels Gaul -- The religious world of John Malalas / David M. Gwynn -- Oikonomia in the hymns of Romanos the Melode / Johannes Koder -- Quotation and allusion in Symeon the new theologian / Manolis S. Patedakis -- Scriptural citation in Andronikos Kamateros / Alessandra Bucossi -- Aristocratic family narratives in twelfth-century Byzantium / Peter Frankopan -- Historiography, epic and the textual transmission of imperial values : Liudprand's Antapodosis and Digenes Akrites / Günter Prinzing -- Intertextuality in the late Byzantine romance Tale of Troy / Ulrich Moennig -- Late Byzantine school teaching through the Iambic Canons and their Paraphrase / Dimitrios Skrekas -- Eros, literature and the Veroli casket / Liz James -- Object, text and performance in four Komnenian tent poems / Margaret Mullett -- Textual and visual representations of the Antipodes from Byzantium and the Latin West / Maja Kominko -- Basil I, Constantine VII and Armenian literary tradition in Byzantium / Tim Greenwood -- Bilingual reading, the Alexiad and the Gesta Roberti Wiscardi / James Howard-Johnston -- Transplanting culture : from Greek novel to medieval romance / Roderick Beaton -- Anonymous textual survivals from Late Antiquity / Fiona K. Haarer -- Authorship and the letters of Theodore Daphnopates / John Duffy -- Authorship revisited : language and metre in the Ptochoprodromika / Marjolijne C. Janssen, Marc D. Lauxtermann -- The lexicon of horses' colours in learned and vernacular texts / Erich Trapp -- Multilingualism and translation in the edition of vernacular texts / Manolis Papathomopoulos -- Afterword : reading and hearing in Byzantium / Elizabeth Jeffreys, Michael Jeffreys.
Summary:
"Offering a comprehensive introduction to the history of books, readers and reading in the Byzantine Empire and its sphere of influence, this volume addresses a paradox. Advanced literacy was rare among imperial citizens, being restricted by gender and class. Yet the state's economic, religious and political institutions insisted on the fundamental importance of the written record. Starting from the materiality of codices, documents and inscriptions, the volume's contributors draw attention to the evidence for a range of interactions with texts. They examine the role of authors, compilers and scribes. They look at practices such as the close perusal of texts in order to produce excerpts, notes, commentaries and editions. But they also analyse the social implications of the constant intersection of writing with both image and speech. Showcasing current methodological approaches, this collection of essays aims to place a discussion of Byzantium within the mainstream of medieval textual studies." Publisher's website.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.