Beauty and the Male Body in Byzantium

Beauty and the Male Body in Byzantium PDF Author: M. Hatzaki
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230245307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
A neglected aspect of Byzantium, physical beauty appears as a quality with an unmistakable dark side, relating ambiguously to notions of power, goodness, evil, masculinity, effeminacy, life and death. Examined as an attribute of the human and, in particular, of the male body, this study of beauty refines our understanding of the Byzantine world.

Beauty and the Male Body in Byzantium

Beauty and the Male Body in Byzantium PDF Author: M. Hatzaki
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230245307
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
A neglected aspect of Byzantium, physical beauty appears as a quality with an unmistakable dark side, relating ambiguously to notions of power, goodness, evil, masculinity, effeminacy, life and death. Examined as an attribute of the human and, in particular, of the male body, this study of beauty refines our understanding of the Byzantine world.

The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium

The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium PDF Author: Michael Edward Stewart
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429633408
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century. It gathers chapters from both established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines across history, art, archaeology, and religion to provide an accurate representation of the state of the field both now and in its immediate future. The handbook is divided into four subtopics that examine concepts of group and specific individual identity which have been chosen to provide methodologically sophisticated and multidisciplinary perspectives on specific categories of group and individual identity. The topics are Imperial Identities; Romanitas in the Late Antique Mediterranean; Macro and Micro Identities: Religious, Regional, and Ethnic Identities, and Internal Others; and Gendered Identities: Literature, Memory, and Self in Early and Middle Byzantium. While no single volume could ever provide a comprehensive vision of identities on the vast variety of peoples within Byzantium over nearly a millennium of its history, this handbook represents a milestone in offering a survey of the vibrant surge of scholarship examining the numerous and oft-times fluctuating codes of identity that shaped and transformed Byzantium and its neighbours during the empire’s long life.

Exposed

Exposed PDF Author: Caroline Vout
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782835733
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE ANGLO-HELLENIC RUNICMAN AWARD A SUNDAY TIMES AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A gloriously intimate tour of the body in antiquity' Gavin Francis 'A triumph ... an extraordinary book that stopped me in my tracks' Peter Frankopan The Greek and Roman body is often seen as flawless - cast from life in buff bronze and white marble, to sit upon a pedestal. But this, of course, is a lie. Here, classicist Caroline Vout reaches beyond texts and galleries to expose Greek and Roman bodies for what they truly were: anxious, ailing, imperfect, diverse, and responsible for a legacy as lasting as their statues. Taking us on a gruesome, thrilling journey, she taps into the questions that those in the Greek and Roman worlds asked about their bodies - where do we come from? What makes us different from gods and animals? What happens to our bodies, and the forces that govern them, when we die? You've seen the paintings, read the philosophers and heard the myths - now here's the classical body in all its flesh and blood glory.

After the Text

After the Text PDF Author: Liz James
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000468712
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
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.

Miracles Revisited

Miracles Revisited PDF Author: Stefan Alkier
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110296373
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Since David Hume, the interpretation of miracle stories has been dominated in the West by the binary distinction of fact vs. fiction. The form-critical method added another restriction to the interpretation of miracles by neglecting the context of its macrotexts. Last but not least the hermeneutics of demythologizing was interested in the self-understanding of individuals and not in political perspectives. The book revisits miracle stories with regard to these dimensions: 1. It demands to connect the interpretation of Miracle Stories to concepts of reality. 2. It criticizes the restrictions of the form critical method. 3. It emphasizes the political implications of Miracle Stories and their interpretations. Even the latest research accepts this modern opposition of fact and fiction as self-evident. This book will examine critically these concepts of reality with interpretations of miracles. The book will address how concepts of reality, always complex, came to expression in stories of miraculous healings and their reception in medicine, art, literature, theology and philosophy, from classic antiquity to the Middle Ages. Only through such bygone concepts, contemporary interpretations of ancient healings can gain plausibility.

Michael Psellos

Michael Psellos PDF Author: Stratis Papaioannou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107065283
Category : Greek literature
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
"This book explores Michael Psellos' place in the history of Greek rhetoric and self-representation and his impact on the development of Byzantine literature. Avoiding the modern dilemma that vacillates between Psellos the pompous rhetorician and Psellos the ingenious thinker, Professor Papaioannou unravels the often misunderstood Byzantine rhetoric, its rich discursive tradition, and the social fabric of elite Constantinopolitan culture which rhetoric addressed. The book offers close readings of Psellos' personal letters, speeches, lectures, and historiographical narratives, and analysis of other early Byzantine and classical models of authorship in Byzantine book culture, such as Gregory of Nazianzos, Synesios of Cyrene, Hermogenes, and Plato. It also details Psellos' innovative attention to authorial creativity, performative mimesis, and the aesthetics of the self. Simultaneously, it traces within Byzantium complex expressions of emotion and gender, notions of authorship and subjectivity, and theories of fictionality and literature, challenging the common fallacy that these are modern inventions"--

The Art of Dining in Medieval Byzantium

The Art of Dining in Medieval Byzantium PDF Author: Lara Frentrop
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000997251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Thousands of intact ceramic bowls and plates as well as fragments made in the medieval Byzantine empire survive to this day. Decorated with figural and non-figural imagery applied in a variety of techniques and adorned with colourful paints and glazes, the vessels can tell us much about those who owned them and those who looked at them. In addition to innumerable ceramic vessels, a handful of precious metal bowls and plates survive from the period. Together, these objects make up the art of dining in medieval Byzantium. This art of dining was effervescent, at turns irreverent and deadly serious, visually stunning and fun. It is suggestive of ways in which those viewing the objects used a quotidian and biologically necessary (f)act – that of eating – to reflect on their lives and deaths, their aspirations and their realities. This book examines the ceramic and metal vessels in terms of the information offered on the foods eaten, the foods desired and their status; the spectacle of the banquet; the relationship between word and image in medieval Byzantium; the dangers of taste; the emergence of new moral and social ideals; and the use of dining as a tool in constructing and enforcing hierarchy. This book is of appeal to scholarly and non-scholarly audiences interested in the art and material culture of the medieval period and in the social history of food and eating.

Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory

Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory PDF Author: A. Edward Siecienski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190065060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
"In 1576, as the Protestant Reformation continued to sweep across Western Europe and Catholic prelates tried to stem the tide through diligent application of Trent's reforming agenda, the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo (1538-84) penned a letter to his clergy. In order to restore the Church to its former glory, he enjoined his "beloved brethren" to "bring back good observances and holy customs which have grown cold and been abandoned over the course of time." Chief among them, he wrote, was the custom, which although ancient, had been "practically lost nearly everywhere in Italy . . . I mean the practice that ecclesiastical persons not grow, but rather shave the beard, . . .a custom of our Fathers, almost perpetually retained in the Church" that was "replete with mystical meanings.""--

Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages

Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Larissa Tracy
Publisher: DS Brewer
ISBN: 184384351X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Essays exploring medieval castration, as reflected in archaeology, law, historical record, and literary motifs. Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric castration pervadesa number of medieval literary genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects includearchaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle ages, Abelard. LARISSA TRACY is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Larissa Tracy, Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams, Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A. Clark, Karin Sellberg, LenaWånggren

The Early Middle Ages

The Early Middle Ages PDF Author: Franca Ela Consolino
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 0884143813
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Examine the creative, profound dialogue between medieval women and biblical traditions The latest volume in the Bible and Women series examines the relationship between women and the Bible’s reception during the early Middle Ages (500–1100 CE) in both the Greek East and the Latin West. Essays focus on interactions between women and the Bible through biblical precepts on women and for women, biblical women as the subjects of action or objects of discussion, and writings by women that refer to the Bible as a moral authority. The women discussed in the volume range from the well-known—including the nuns Kassia in Byzantium and Hrosvita in the West; the aristocrat Dhuoda, author of a moral guide for her son; Gisela, the sister of Charlemagne and abbess of Chelles; and her niece Rotrude—to those who remain anonymous. Contributions also explore how the Old and New Testaments exercised influence on emerging Islam. Features: Analysis of images of the Virgin Mary as a means of tracing the spread of her cult and feast days from East to West Exploration of the significance of classical culture for medieval women who composed poems for a Christian audience Evaluation of art as a means of establishing devotional relationships not necessarily mediated by the voices of preachers or the reading of texts .