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  3. Writer and Occasion in Twelfth-Century Byzantium
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      December 2020
      December 2020
      ISBN:
      9781108910217
      9781108843355
      9781108824262
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108910217
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.48kg, 232 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.35kg, 232 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Literature, European and World Literature: General Interest
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    Subjects:
    Literature, European and World Literature: General Interest
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    Book description

    In twelfth-century Constantinople, writers worked on commission for the imperial family or aristocratic patrons. Texts were occasioned by specific events, representing both a link between writer and patron and between literary imagination and empirical reality. This is a study of how one such writer, Constantine Manasses, achieved that aim. Manasses depicted and praised the present by drawing from the rich sources of the Graeco-Roman and Biblical tradition, thus earning commissions from wealthy 'friends' during a career that spanned more than three decades. While the occasional literature of writers like Manasses has sometimes been seen as 'empty rhetoric', devoid of literary ambition, this study assumes that writing on command privileges originality and encourages the challenging of conventions. A society like twelfth-century Byzantium, in which occasional writing was central, called for a strong and individual authorial presence, since voice was the primary instrument for a successful career.

    Reviews

    'Here is a brilliantly written book that demonstrates an in-depth knowledge of the work of Constantin Manassès, while going off the beaten track to throw a new look at his writing.'

    Anna Lampadaridi Source: Review of Byzantine Studies

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