The Routledge Handbook of Rewriting in Byzantium by Codoñer, Juan Signes; Hinterberger, Martin; Martín, Inmaculada Pérez;

Short description:

The Routledge Handbook of Rewriting in Byzantium presents an overview of the various rewriting processes involved in the production of Byzantine literature.

Long description:

The Routledge Handbook of Rewriting in Byzantium presents an overview of the various rewriting processes involved in the production of Byzantine literature. Due to the lack of recent systematic research on the totality of Byzantine literature, which embraces a long millennium of texts, the fluid concept of ‘rewriting’, here studied for the first time in all its complexity, serves as a unifying criterion for understanding the literary task of the Byzantines. Literature in Byzantium went well beyond the problems of language and genre and was adapted according to the audience and the expectations of the readers, which varied greatly in different periods.

With contributions from 25 scholars, this book analyses and discusses a variety of topics, including: the rewriting of the past, modes of persuasion as a driving force behind rewriting, changing muses, the adaptation of hagiography to changing patterns of behaviour, updating of technical texts, and the necessity for theological and philosophical reinterpretation of inherited texts.

This book will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in Byzantine literature, culture, and literary methods.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

0. Preliminary issues

0.1. Levels of Greek

Martin Hinterberger and Juan Signes Codoñer

0.2. Vocabulary for rewriting in Byzantium

Juan Signes Codoñer

0.3. Tracing the Byzantine authors’ understanding of literary imitation

Elisabeth Schiffer

0.4. Σχέδη, dossiers, συλλογαί, compilations, excerpta

Filippo Ronconi

0.5. “Seeds for our tongue’s and our intellect’s training”: Rewriting and Textual Transmission

Inmaculada Pérez Martín

0.6. Collective Rewriting from Late Antiquity to the Palaiologan Period: An Attempt to Trace Collaboration in Literary, Scientific Projects and Manuscript Production

Andras Németh

1. REWRITING OR INVENTING THE PAST?: Historiography and novel

1.1. The unending (re)writing of history

Juan Signes Codoñer

1.2. Rewriting in Historiography: the evidence of the Proems

Eirene Kiapidou

1.3. Late metaphraseis of Byzantine historiographical texts

Martin Hinterberger

1.4. Reworking, Rewriting, and Mouvance in Late-Byzantine Vernacular Literature

Carolina Cupane and Martin Hinterberger

2. THE PLACES OF PERSUASION: Oratory and rhetoric

2.1. Rewriting Homilies and Homilies Rewriting

Petros Tsagkaropoulos

2.2. The rhetoric of rewriting and the rewriting of rhetoric in John Tzetzes

Aglae Pizzone

2.3. Rewriting letters in Byzantium

Michael Grünbart

3. THE CHANGING MUSES: poetry

3.1. The Reuse of Ancient Epigram in Byzantine Poetry. An Overview

Ugo Mondini

3.2. Prosifying classical verses

David Pérez Moro

3.3. Memory and Rewriting in Schedography: The Cases of Fables and Narratives

Nikos Zagklas

4. SELLING PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR: Hagiography

4.1. Same Saints, Different Garments: Hagiographic rewriting before Symeon Metaphrastes

Daria Resh

4.2. Hagiography of the Macedonian period and Symeon Metaphrastes Christian Høgel

4.3. Hagiography of the Palaiologan period

Lev Lukhovitskiy

5. SHARING TECHNICAL COMPETENCE: Law, medicine and science

5.1. Rewriting Byzantine law

Marios Tantalos

5.2. The process of re-writing in the production of acts in the Byzantine world

Raúl Estangüi

5.3. Rewriting in Byzantine Medical Literature

Isabel Grimm-Stadelmann

5.4. Rewriting pharmacological treatises

Mónica Durán

5.5. Rewriting Mathematical and Astronomical Treatises

Fabio Acerbi

5.6. Rewriting Ancient Geography

Paula Caballero

6. THE QUEST OF KNOWLEDGE:  Philosophy and theology

6.1. Rewriting Techniques in Byzantine Philosophical Commentaries

Michele Trizio

6.2. The last dogmatic conundrum: transmitting and innovating patristic theology on the Holy Spirit

Alessandra Bucossi