Letters, Literacy and Literature in Byzantium

Contents: Preface; 25 years of Byzantine letters, literacy and literature. Part 1 Letters: The classical tradition in the Byzantine letter; The language of diplomacy; Originality in the Byzantine letter: the case of exile; 1098 and all that: Theophylact bishop of Semnea and the Alexian reconquest of Anatolia. Part 2 Literary Practices: Writing in early medieval Byzantium; Food for the spirit and a light for the road: reading the Bible in the Life of Cyril Phileotes. Part 3 The Literary Process: Aristocracy and patronage in the literary circles of Comnenian Constantinople;The madness of genre; Rhetoric, theory and the imperative of performance: Byzantium and now; Novelisation in Byzantium: narrative after the revival of fiction. Part 4 Literary Texts: Alexios I Komnenos and imperial renewal; The imperial vocabulary of Alexios I Komnenos; In peril on the sea: travel genres and the unexpected; Literary biography and historical genre in the Life of Cyril Phileotes by Nicholas Kataskepenos. Part 5 Literature: Dancing with deconstructionists in the gardens of the Muses: new literary history vs ?; New literary history and the history of Byzantine literature: a worthwhile endeavour?; Additional notes and comments; Errata; Index.