1,720,965 research outputs found
Emotions through Time: from Antiquity to Byzantium
No full textFrom a comparative perspective, international scholars explore the reception and influence of ancient emotion concepts in Byzantine sources. They also shed new light on the Byzantine emotional universe and its impact on medieval and early modern culture
Aristocracy and Literary Production in the Tenth Century
No full textTaking as its starting point the figure and work of John Geometra, a poet active in 10th-century Constantinople, the article examines two interrelated phenomena. On the one hand, the author questions whether a literary production of aristocratic and provincial inspiration existed in Byzantium during the period under examination, and proposes to identify traces of it in the Byzantine literature that has come down to us. On the other hand, the research intends to reconstruct how the Constantinopolitan cultural elite active at the Macedonian court was able to translate the ambitions and traditions of this rising social group, expressing them in the language of the 'high' classicizing literature
Towards a Byzantine Theory of the Comic?
No full textThis chapter tackles the question of laughter and humour from a theoretical perspective. Rather than map out the Byzantine ‘comic landscape’ by resorting to modern theorisations, it looks at Greek medieval humour and laughter from within, in the attempt to single out elements of a Byzantine theory of the comic. Recent scholarship has gone some way towards dismantling the prejudice that there was no room for laughter in Byzantine society, combing the sources for tangible evidence of humour and jokes, or focusing on the scant traces for the survival of genres such as mimes and satires. Less reflection has been devoted to understanding how the Byzantines construed, conceptualised and justified comic features of discourse. Patristic and devotional texts, frowning upon laughter and humour, have taken the lion’s share of attention. This chapter sheds light on the other side of the coin, concentrating on secular texts used for educational purposes in middle Byzantine literature (rhetorical handbooks and commentaries), aiming to unravel the function that the Byzantines assigned to laughter, irony and humour in their literary production. Four major areas are explored, crucial to the deployment and legitimation of the comic in Byzantium: psychology, rhetorical display, didacticism and narrative.</p
Toward a selfdetermined and emotional gaze: Agathias and the icon of the Archangel Michael
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