Literature and Culture in Late Byzantine Thessalonica PDF Download

Author: Eugenia Russell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781472598981
Category : Byzantine literature
Languages : el
Pages : 201

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Book Description
"The 'long' fourteenth century perhaps can be seen as Thessalonica's heyday. Alongside its growing commercial prowess, the city was developing into an important centre of government, where members of the Byzantine imperial family of the Palaiologoi ruled independently under full imperial titles, striking coinage and following an increasingly autonomous external policy. It was also developing into a formidable centre for letters, education, and artistic expression, due in part to Palaiologan patronage. This volume sets out the political and commercial landscape of Thessalonica between 1303 and 1430, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, before focusing on the literary and hymnographical aspects of the city's cultural history and its legacy. The cosmopolitan nature of urban life in Thessalonica, the polyphony of opinions it experienced and expressed, its multiple links with centres such as Constantinople, Adrianople, Athos, Lemnos and Lesvos, and the diversity and strength of its authorial voices make the study of the city's cultural life a vital part of our understanding of the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean."--Publisher's website.

Author: Eugenia Russell
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441155848
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The 'long' fourteenth century perhaps can be seen as Thessalonica's heyday. Alongside its growing commercial prowess, the city was developing into an important centre of government, where members of the Byzantine imperial family of the Palaiologoi ruled independently under full imperial titles, striking coinage and following an increasingly autonomous external policy. It was also developing into a formidable centre for letters, education, and artistic expression, due in part to Palaiologan patronage. This volume sets out the political and commercial landscape of Thessalonica between 1303 and 1430, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, before focusing on the literary and hymnographical aspects of the city's cultural history and its legacy. The cosmopolitan nature of urban life in Thessalonica, the polyphony of opinions it experienced and expressed, its multiple links with centres such as Constantinople, Adrianople, Athos, Lemnos and Lesvos, and the diversity and strength of its authorial voices make the study of the city's cultural life a vital part of our understanding of the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean.

Author: Siren Çelik
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108874649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Few Byzantine emperors had a life as rich and as turbulent as Manuel II Palaiologos. A fascinating figure at the crossroads of Byzantine, Western European and Ottoman history, he endured political turmoil, witnessed no less than three sieges by the Ottomans and travelled as far as France and England. He was a prolific writer, producing a vast corpus of literary, theological and philosophical works. Yet, despite his talent, Manuel has largely been ignored as an author. This biography constructs an in-depth picture of him of as a ruler, author and personality, as well as providing insight into his world and times. It offers the first analysis of the emperor's complete oeuvre, focusing on his literary style, self-representation philosophical/theological thought. By focusing not only on political events, but also on the personality, personal life and literary output of Manuel, this biography paints a new portrait of a multifaceted emperor.

Author: Nikolaos Chrissis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351671030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The interaction between Byzantium and the Latin West was intimately connected to practically all the major events and developments which shaped the medieval world in the High and Late Middle Ages – for example, the rise of the ‘papal monarchy’, the launch of the Crusades, the expansion of international and longdistance commerce, or the flowering of the Renaissance. This volume explores not only the actual avenues of interaction between the two sides (trade, political and diplomatic contacts, ecclesiastical dialogue, intellectual exchange, armed conflict), but also the image each side had of the other and the way perceptions evolved over this long period in the context of their manifold contact. Twenty-one stimulating papers offer new insights and original research on numerous aspects of this relationship, pooling the expertise of an international group of scholars working on both sides of the Byzantine-Western ‘divide’, on topics as diverse as identity formation, ideology, court ritual, literary history, military technology and the economy, among others. The particular contribution of the research presented here is the exploration of how cross-cultural relations were shaped by the interplay of the thought-world of the various historical agents and the material circumstances which circumscribed their actions. The volume is primarily aimed at scholars and students interested in the history of Byzantium, the Mediterranean world, and, more widely, intercultural contacts in the Middle Ages.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004392882
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
This book offers the first complete survey of the Byzantine poetic production (4th to 15th centuries). It examines the use of poetry in various sociocultural settings in Constantinople and various other centres of the Byzantine empire.

Author: Krystina Kubina
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000375668
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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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

Author: Jonathan Harris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135136877X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Introduction to Byzantium, 602–1453 provides students with an accessible guide to medieval Byzantium. Beginning with the near collapse of Byzantium in the seventh century, the book traces its survival and development through to its absorption by the Ottoman empire. As well as having an overall political narrative, the chapters cover a wide range of topics including society and economy, art and architecture, literature and education, military tactics and diplomacy, gender and education. They also explore themes that remain prominent and highly debated today, including relations between Islam and the West, the impact of the Crusades, the development of Russia, and the emergence of Orthodox Christianity. Comprehensively written, each chapter provides an overview of the particular period or topic, a summary of the ongoing historiographical debates, primary source material textboxes, further reading recommendations and a ‘points to remember’ section. Introduction to Byzantium, 602–453 provides students with a thorough introduction to the history of Byzantium and equips them with the tools to write successful analytical essays. It is essential reading for any student of the history of the Byzantine empire.

Author: Slobodan Curcic
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691198047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
The centuries-long economic and military decline of the Byznatine Empire, which culminated in its political disappearance as a state in 1459, was, paradoxically, accompanied by high levels of cultural achievement. Aimed at broadening our understanding of the final phase of the empire, this collection explores how Byzantine ideological, spiritual, and artistic traditions transcending the economic and political realities of the time. The papers, delivered at an interdisciplinary colloquium held in May 1989 at Princeton University, deal with hagiographic, monastic, literary, architectural, and artistic questions, as well as the general cultural and social issues, of this fascinating period. Along with the editors, the contributors are Smilkjka Gabelic, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Angela Hero, Robert Ousterhout, Marcus Rautman, Steven Reinert, Alice Mary Talbot, SPeros Vryonis, and John J. Yiannias. Slobodan Curcic is Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Doula Mouriki teaches at the Technical University of Athens. Publications of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author: Giancarlo Abbamonte
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110660962
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The purpose of this volume is to investigate the crucial role played by the return of knowledge of Greek in the transformation of European culture, both through the translation of texts, and through the direct study of the language. It aims to collect and organize in one database all the digitalised versions of the first editions of Greek grammars, lexica and school texts available in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, between two crucial dates: the start of Chrysoloras’s teaching in Florence (c. 1397) and the end of the activity of Aldo Manuzio and Andrea Asolano in Venice (c. 1529). This is the first step in a major investigation into the knowledge of Greek and its dissemination in Western Europe: the selection of the texts and the first milestones in teaching methods were put together in that period, through the work of scholars like Chrysoloras, Guarino and many others. A remarkable role was played also by the men involved in the Council of Ferrara (1438-39), where there was a large circulation of Greek books and ideas. About ten years later, Giovanni Tortelli, together with Pope Nicholas V, took the first steps in founding the Vatican Library. Research into the return of the knowledge of Greek to Western Europe has suffered for a long time from the lack of intersection of skills and fields of research: to fully understand this phenomenon, one has to go back a very long way through the tradition of the texts and their reception in contexts as different as the Middle Ages and the beginning of Renaissance humanism. However, over the past thirty years, scholars have demonstrated the crucial role played by the return of knowledge of Greek in the transformation of European culture, both through the translation of texts, and through the direct study of the language. In addition, the actual translations from Greek into Latin remain poorly studied and a clear understanding of the intellectual and cultural contexts that produced them is lacking. In the Middle Ages the knowledge of Greek was limited to isolated areas that had no reciprocal links. As had happened to many Latin authors, all Greek literature was rather neglected, perhaps because a number of philosophical texts had already been available in translation from the seventh century AD, or because of a sense of mistrust, due to their ethnic and religious differences. Between the 12th and 14th century AD, a change is perceptible: the sharp decrease in Greek texts and knowledge in the South of Italy, once a reference-point for this kind of study, was perhaps an important reason prompting Italian humanists to go and study Greek in Constantinople. Over the past thirty years it has become evident to scholars that humanism, through the re-appreciation of classical antiquity, created a bridge to the modern era, which also includes the Middle Ages. The criticism by the humanists of medieval authors did not prevent them from using a number of tools that the Middle Ages had developed or synthesized: glossaries, epitomes, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, translations, commentaries. At present one thing that is missing, however, is a systematic study of the tools used for the study of Greek between the 15th and 16th century; this is truly important, because, in the following centuries, Greek culture provided the basis of European thought in all the most important fields of knowledge. This volume seeks to supply that gap.

Author: Massimo Mastrogregori
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110530678
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Every year, the Bibliography catalogues the most important new publications, historiographical monographs, and journal articles throughout the world, extending from prehistory and ancient history to the most recent contemporary historical studies. Within the systematic classification according to epoch, region, and historical discipline, works are also listed according to author’s name and characteristic keywords in their title.