Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature

About this book

"Byzantine literary studies, despite their long scholarly tradition, remain a fragile enterprise, just as Byzantine Greek literature continues to be a relatively exotic domain. The present volume, the first of its kind in English, maps this literature and the field of its study, aiming to provide a true vade mecum, that will accompany as well as invite readers of Byzantine texts. In twenty-five chapters, composed by leading specialists, the volume surveys the immense body of Greek literature produced from the fourth to the fifteenth century CE, and propagates a nuanced understanding of what "literature" was in Byzantium, highlighting key problems, and presenting basic research tools. Four parts structure the volume. Part I, "Materials, Norms, Codes", presents basic matrices for literary creation in Byzantium: language, manuscript book culture, theories of literature, and systems of textual memory, from within the history of Greek (classical literature and ancient myth) and from without (literature translated into Greek from other languages). Part II, "Forms", deals with the "how" of Byzantine literature: oral discourse and "text"; storytelling; rhetoric; rewriting; verse; and song. Part III, "Agents", focuses on the "creators" of Byzantine literature, both its producers and its recipients. Part IV, "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. A final, concluding chapter offers a view of the recent past and the likely future of Byzantine literary studies"--