"His Words Were Nourishment and His Counsel Food"

Author: Efrosini Camatsos
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2014-05-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443859966

“His Words were Nourishment and his Counsel Food”: A Festschrift for David W. Holton brings together essays on Greek literature from medieval romances to postmodern fiction. It provides an illuminating first insight into the variety of Modern Greek literature for the general reader, while also catering to more specialised students and scholars with new research findings and close studies of individual texts. The editors and authors, all former doctoral students of Professor Holton at Cambridge, conceived this volume as a thanksgiving present to him on the occasion of his retirement and as a collection which reflects the high quality and significance of Modern Greek studies at the University of Cambridge. The essays explore themes ranging from the erotic gaze and nightingales to cannibalism and dictatorships. Individual contributions discuss the relationship of Greek works with French and Persian medieval romances, the Italian Renaissance and German expressionism, and the influence of Shakespeare on the best-known Modern Greek poet, C. P. Cavafy. Others explore the interrelation of architecture and literature in the Cretan Renaissance masterpiece Erotokritos, the influence of religious texts on Roidis’s Pope Joan, and the assimilation of Byzantium into Greek historiography by intellectuals of Greek Romanticism. On a more personal level, the reader will learn about the experiences of a British Victorian woman translator in 1880s Athens, and the friendship between George Seferis and Sir Steven Runciman. Cretan cities figure in three essays which investigate the literary and historical context of the long Ottoman siege of Chandax in the seventeenth century and issues of identity in the modern-day lives of Chania’s Greek and Turkish inhabitants. Shifting notions of identity are further explored in the contemporary Greek novels of an Albanian immigrant author. His Words were Nourishment demonstrates the remarkable capacity of Greek literature to thrive within the context of cultural exchange and shifting historical boundaries.

Vitsentzos Kornaros, Erotokritos

Vitsentzos Kornaros, Erotokritos
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004344845

During the later years of the Venetian occupation of Crete (1211-1669) the island enjoyed the intellectual and cultural stimulus of the Renaissance. This bore fruit not only in the work of painters such as Dominikos Theotokopoulos, alias El Greco, but also in poetry, where Vitsentzos Kornaros composed the most important work of early modern Greek literature, Erotokritos. Written c. 1600, this romance takes over the theme of a minor French poem, Paris et Vienne of Pierre de la Cypède, and puts it in a Hellenic setting where knights, both Greek and foreign, come to joust in an imaginary pre-christian Athens. It is here presented for the first time in a complete English prose translation with a scholarly introduction and notes.

Roidis and the Borrowed Muse

Roidis and the Borrowed Muse
Author: Foteini Lika
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre:
ISBN: 1527518329

Using diverse sources ranging from hagiographies and historiographies to historical novels and satirical poems, this is the first book-length examination of Emmanouil Roidis’ Pope Joan (1866). Providing a long-overdue and authoritative introduction to the sinuous poetics of one of the most celebrated Modern Greek novels, Roidis and the Borrowed Muse takes in a broad gamut of British writers, from Swift, Sterne and Gibbon to Scott, Macaulay and Byron, and casts a fresh and original eye on the intertextual connections between their work and Roidis’ magnum opus. This comprehensive comparative study will appeal not only to intellectual historians, literary critics and students, but also to scholars of Romanticism and readers interested in the many facets of satire.

Metaphrasis:A Byzantine Concept of Rewriting and Its Hagiographical Products

Metaphrasis:A Byzantine Concept of Rewriting and Its Hagiographical Products
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2020-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004438459

This volume represents the first discussion of rewriting in Byzantium. It brings together a rich variety of articles treating hagiographical rewriting from various angles. The contributors discuss and comment on different kinds of texts from late antiquity to late Byzantium.

Reading the Late Byzantine Romance

Reading the Late Byzantine Romance
Author: Adam J. Goldwyn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2018-12-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108168620

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.

The Late Byzantine Romance in Context

The Late Byzantine Romance in Context
Author: Ioannis Smarnakis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040021190

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.

Greek Laughter and Tears

Greek Laughter and Tears
Author: Margaret Alexiou
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2017-06-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474403808

Explores the range and complexity of human emotions and their transmission across cultural traditionsWhat makes us laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time? How do these two primal, seemingly discrete and non-verbal modes of expression intersect in everyday life and ritual, and what range of emotions do they evoke? How may they be voiced, shaped and coloured in literature and liturgy, art and music?Bringing together scholars from diverse periods and disciplines of Hellenic and Byzantine studies, this volume explores the shifting shapes and functions of laughter and tears. With a focus on the tragic, the comic and the tragicomic dimensions of laughter and tears in art, literature and performance, as well as on their emotional, socio-cultural and religious significance, it breaks new ground in the study of ancient and Byzantine affectivity.Key featuresIncludes an international cast of 25 distinguished contributors Prominence is given to performative arts and to interactions with other cultures Transitions from Late Antiquity to Byzantium, and from Byzantium to the Renaissance, form focal points from which contributors look backwards, forwards and sidewaysHighlights the variety, audacity and quality of the finest Byzantine works and the extent to which they anticipated the renaissance

British Writing, Propaganda and Cultural Diplomacy in the Second World War and Beyond

British Writing, Propaganda and Cultural Diplomacy in the Second World War and Beyond
Author: Beatriz Lopez
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2024-07-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350412155

This book offers the first sustained analysis of the interactions between British writers, propaganda and culture from the Second World War to the Cold War. It traces the involvement of a series of major cultural figures in domestic and international propaganda campaigns and throws new light on the global deployment of British propaganda and cultural diplomacy in colonial and post-colonial theatres such as Cyprus, India and Sierra Leone. Chapters re-evaluate the propaganda work of prominent writers including Arthur Koestler and Dylan Thomas in the light of new archival research, study how organisations including the BBC, British Council and Ministry of Information engaged with new media forms, analyse cultural representations of propaganda service and investigate how British literature and culture was deployed and projected as a form of soft power across the globe. Featuring contributions from a variety of disciplines, including literary studies, visual culture, book history and radio history, this book brings together a constellation of established and emerging scholars to show the crucial role played in shaping and mediating the techniques and content of British information campaigns of the mid-twentieth century.

The Media of Secular Music in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (1100–1650)

The Media of Secular Music in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (1100–1650)
Author: Vincenzo Borghetti
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2024-05-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1040021069

This book brings a new perspective to secular music sources from the Middle Ages and early modernity by viewing them as media communication tools, whose particular features shape the meaning of their contents. Ranging from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries, and across countries and genres, the chapters offer innovative insights into the historical relationship between music and its presentation in a wide variety of media. The lens of media enables contributors to expand music history beyond notated music manuscripts and instruments to include images, furniture, luxury items, and other objects, and to address uniquely visual and material aspects of music sources in books and literature. Drawing together an international group of contributors, the volume pays close attention to the medial and material dimensions of musical sources, considering them as multifaceted objects that not only contain but also determine the nature of the music they transmit. Transforming our understanding of musical media, this volume will be of interest to scholars of musicology, art history, and medieval and early modern cultures.

Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond

Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 550
Release: 2016-09-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004307729

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.