The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne

The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne PDF Author: Panagiotis A. Agapitos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781789622164
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume offers the first fully scholarly translation into English of the Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, a love romance written around the middle of 13th century at the imperial court of Nicaea, at the time when Constantinople was still under Latin dominion. With its approximately 4600 verses, Livistros and Rodamne is the longest and the most artfully composed of the eight surviving Byzantine love romances. It was almost certainly composed to be recited in front of an aristocratic audience by an educated poet experienced in the Greek tradition of erotic fiction, yet at the same time knowledgeable of the Medieval French and Persian romances of love and adventure. The poet has created a very modern narrative filled with attractive episodes, including the only scene of demonic incantation in Byzantine fiction. The language of the romance is of a high poetic quality, challenging the translator at every step. Finally, Livistros and Rodamne is the only Byzantine romance that consistently constructs the Latin world of chivalry as an exotic setting, a type of occidentalism aiming to tame and to incorporate the Frankish Other in the social norms of the Byzantine Self after the Fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204.

The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne

The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne PDF Author: Panagiotis A. Agapitos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781800856035
Category : Romances
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume offers the first fully scholarly translation into English of the Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, a love romance written around the middle of 13th century at the imperial court of Nicaea, at the time when Constantinople was still under Latindominion. With its approximately 4700 verses, Livistros and Rodamne is the longest and the most artfully composed of the eight surviving Byzantine love romances. It was almost certainly written to be recited in front of an aristocratic audience by an educated poet experienced in the Greek tradition of erotic fiction, yet at the same time knowledgeable of the Medieval French and Persian romances of love and adventure. The poet has created a very 'modern' narrative filled with attractiveepisodes, including the only scene of demonic incantation in Byzantine fiction.The language of the romance is of a high poetic quality, challenging thetranslator at every step. Finally, Livistros and Rodamne is the only Byzantine romance that consistently constructs the Latin world of chivalry as an exotic setting, a type of occidentalism aiming to tame and to incorporate the Frankish Otherin the social norms of the Byzantine Self after the Fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204.

The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne

The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne PDF Author: Panagiotis A. Agapitos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781800855458
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Allegory of Love in the Early Renaissance

The Allegory of Love in the Early Renaissance PDF Author: James Calum O’Neill
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100091190X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
Described as ‘the most beautiful book ever printed’ previous research has focused on the printing history of the Hypnerotomachia and its copious literary sources. This monograph critically engages with the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia and with Poliphilo as a character within this narrative, placing it within its European literary context. Using narratological analysis, it examines the journey of Poliphilo and the series of symbolic, allegorical, and metaphorical experiences narrated by him that are indicative of his metamorphosing interiority. It analyses the relationship between Poliphilo and his external surroundings in sequences of the narrative pertaining to thresholds; the symbolic architectural, topographical, and garden forms and spaces; and Poliphilo’s transforming interior passions including his love of antiquarianism, language, and Polia, the latter of which leads to his elegiac description of lovesickness, besides examinations of numerosophical symbolism in number, form, and proportion of the architectural descriptions and how they relate to the narrative.

Reading the Late Byzantine Romance

Reading the Late Byzantine Romance PDF Author: Adam J. Goldwyn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108168620
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 467

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

A Companion to the Intellectual Life of the Palaeologan Period

A Companion to the Intellectual Life of the Palaeologan Period PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004527087
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 531

Get Book Here

Book Description
Focuses on the scholarly interests of the intellectual elites during the last two centuries of Byzantium and the cultural environment in which they flourished, as well as the interaction between secular and church circles in Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Athos and beyond.

Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean

Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004258159
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 603

Get Book Here

Book Description
Publicly performed rituals and ceremonies form an essential part of medieval political practice and court culture. This applies not only to western feudal societies, but also to the linguistically and culturally highly diversified environment of Byzantium and the Mediterranean basin. The continuity of Roman traditions and cross-fertilization between various influences originating from Constantinople, Armenia, the Arab-Muslim World, and western kingdoms and naval powers provide the framework for a distinct sphere of ritual expression and ceremonial performance. This collective volume, placing Byzantium into a comparative perspective between East and West, examines transformative processes from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, succession procedures in different political contexts, phenomena of cross-cultural appropriation and exchange, and the representation of rituals in art and literature. Contributors are Maria Kantirea, Martin Hinterberger, Walter Pohl, Andrew Marsham, Björn Weiler, Eric J. Hanne, Antonia Giannouli, Jo Van Steenbergen, Stefan Burkhardt, Ioanna Rapti, Jonathan Shepard, Panagiotis Agapitos, Henry Maguire, Christine Angelidi and Margaret Mullett.

The Late Byzantine Romance in Context

The Late Byzantine Romance in Context PDF Author: Ioannis Smarnakis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040021190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book investigates issues of identity and narrativity in late Byzantine romances in a Mediterranean context, covering the chronological span from the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 to the 16th century. It includes chapters not only on romances that were written and read in the broader Byzantine world but also on literary texts from regions around the Mediterranean Sea. The volume offers new insights and covers a variety of interrelated subjects concerning the narrative representations of self-identities, gender, and communities, the perception of political and cultural otherness, and the interaction of space and time with identity formation. The chapters focus on texts from the Byzantine, western European, and Ottoman worlds, thus promoting a cross-cultural approach that highlights the role of the Mediterranean as a shared environment that facilitated communications, cultural interaction, and the trading and reconfiguration of identities. The volume will appeal to a wide audience of researchers and students alike, specializing in or simply interested in cultural studies, Byzantine, western medieval, and Ottoman history and literature.

Mirrors and Mirroring from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period

Mirrors and Mirroring from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period PDF Author: Maria Gerolemou
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135010129X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume examines mirrors and mirroring through a series of multidisciplinary essays, especially focusing on the intersection between technological and cultural dynamics of mirrors. The international scholars brought together here explore critical questions around the mirror as artefact and the phenomenon of mirroring. Beside the common visual registration of an action or inaction, in a two dimensional and reversed form, various types of mirrors often possess special abilities which can produce a distorted picture of reality, serving in this way illusion and falsehood. Part I looks at a selection of theory from ancient writers, demonstrating the concern to explore these same questions in antiquity. Part II considers the role reflections can play in forming ideas of gender and identity. Beyond the everyday, we see in Part III how oracular mirrors and magical mirrors reveal the invisible divine – prosthetics that allow us to look where the eye cannot reach. Finally, Part IV considers mirrors' roles in displaying the visible and invisible in antiquity and since.

Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond

Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004307729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume offers an overview of the rich narrative material circulating in the medieval Mediterranean. As a multilingual and multicultural zone, the Eastern Mediterranean offered a broad market for tales in both oral and written form and longer works of fiction, which were translated and reworked in order to meet the tastes and cultural expectations of new audiences, thus becoming common intellectual property of all the peoples around the Mediterranean shores. Among others, the volume examines for the first time popular eastern tales, such as Kalila and Dimna, Sindbad, Barlaam and Joasaph, and Arabic epics together with their Byzantine adaptations. Original Byzantine love romances, both learned and vernacular, are discussed together with their Persian counterparts and with later adaptations of western stories. This combination of such disparate narrative material aims to highlight both the wealth of medieval storytelling and the fundamental unity of the medieval Mediterranean world. Contributors are Carolina Cupane, Faustina Doufikar-Aerts, Massimo Fusillo, Corinne Jouanno, Grammatiki A. Karla, Bettina Krönung, Renata Lavagnini, Ulrich Moennig, Ingela Nilsson, Claudia Ott, Oliver Overwien, Panagiotis Roilos, Julia Rubanovich, Ida Toth, Robert Volk and Kostas Yiavis.

Epistolary Poetry in Byzantium and Beyond

Epistolary Poetry in Byzantium and Beyond PDF Author: Krystina Kubina
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000375668
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book Here

Book Description
Letters were an important medium of everyday communication in the ancient Mediterranean. Soon after its emergence, the epistolary form was adopted by educated elites and transformed into a literary genre, which developed distinctive markers and was used, for instance, to give political advice, to convey philosophical ideas, or to establish and foster ties with peers. A particular type of this genre is the letter cast in verse, or epistolary poem, which merges the form and function of the letter with stylistic elements of poetry. In Greek literature, epistolary poetry is first safely attested in the fourth century AD and would enjoy a lasting presence throughout the Byzantine and early modern periods. The present volume introduces the reader to this hitherto unexplored chapter of post-classical Greek literature through an anthology of exemplary epistolary poems in the original Greek with facing English translation. This collection, which covers a broad chronological range from late antique epigrams of the Greek Anthology to the poetry of western humanists, is accompanied by exegetical commentaries on the anthologized texts and by critical essays discussing questions of genre, literary composition, and historical and social contexts of selected epistolary poems. Chapters 3 and 4 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/10.4324/9780429288296