Byzantine Greek literature
More general subjects:
Ordres et désordres dans les chaînes exégétiques grecques
Amoncellement de fragments ? catalogue d’extraits ? tapisserie exégétique ? Les chaînes ont pour premier principe d’organisation le texte biblique qu’elles commentent en le suivant pas à pas. Mais comment les différentes scholies sont-elles classées entre elles si elles le sont ? Jusqu’à présent la question de l’organisation interne des chaînes a fait l’objet de remarques rapides en marge de l’étude de telle ou telle collection mais rarement d’un examen approfondi. C’est pourtant un aspect essentiel pour comprendre ce genre en préciser les différentes formes et saisir l’enjeu de ces entreprises byzantines : conserver un maximum de textes favoriser la consultation la mémorisation ou la confrontation de différentes exégèses composer un commentaire continu etc. Cet ouvrage collectif rassemble des enquêtes originales portant aussi bien sur les chaînes de l’Ancien que du Nouveau Testament. Sont explorés différents phénomènes structurants relatifs à la connexion entre texte biblique et commentaire au classement des sources à l’enchaînement des contenus exégétiques à la disposition des scholies sur la page. On met au jour la méthode de travail d’un caténiste ou les étapes de l’élaboration d’une compilation ; une place est accordée au désordre et à ses causes notamment en lien avec les phénomènes de transformation et de combinaison de différentes collections. Premier tour d’horizon permettant déjà de découvrir des situations très diverses ce volume ouvre la voie à une approche comparative des chaînes nécessaire pour mieux comprendre cette pratique de compilation byzantine.
The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the East
The two books of Scriptor Cantor & Notator present an innovative multi-author project dealing with the complex interconnections between learning writing and performing chant in the Middle Ages. A number of different methodological approaches have been employed with the aim of beginning to understand the phenomenon of chant transmission over a large geographical area linking and contrasting modern definitions of East and West. Thus in spite of this wide geographical spread and the consequent variety of rites languages and musical styles involved the common thread of parallels and similarities between various chant repertoires arising from the need to fix oral repertories in a written form and the challenges involved in so doing are what bring this wide variety of repertoires and approaches together. This multi-centric multi-disciplinary approach will encourage scholars working in these areas to consider their work as part of a much larger geographical and historical picture and thus reveal to reader and listener more and far richer patterns of connections and developments than might otherwise have been suspected. The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the East brings together articles on ancient Greek Byzantine Coptic and Armenian music scripts in the East. Together with the collection of essays published in The Materiality of Sound in Chant Manuscripts in the West these books discuss local scribal peculiarities and idiosyncrasies beyond the cultural and geographical contexts of production and uses of their manuscript sources.
The Byzantine Historiographical Prefaces (4th–15th Centuries)
A Study on the Praxis and Culture of Writing History in Byzantium
In recent years a lively debate has developed on the features of Byzantine historiography. The increasingly dominant tendency today is to treat historical texts more as pleasant literary narratives than as systematic historical accounts of the political and military history of Byzantium. The present study aims to contribute to this debate by revisiting the voices of the Byzantine authors themselves focusing on the extant historical prefaces from the Early Middle and Late Byzantine eras. This seemed timely more than a century after the publication of Ηeinrich Lieberich’s fundamental work on Byzantine historiographical proems.
Obviously not all prefaces are of equal interest: some serve a purely conventional function while others are composed more thoughtfully and merit more careful attention. The book’s goal is twofold: firstly to outline the details of the prefatory function of the Byzantine historiographical proems as microtexts; secondly to detect and evaluate the theoretical views expressed by the authors of each period regarding the genre of Byzantine historiography. This will expand our knowledge of how the Byzantines wrote (praxis) and thought (culture) about historiography.
Byzantine Liturgical Books
An Introduction
The world of Byzantine liturgical book types is fascinating but also confusing. While they are central to the study and celebration of Byzantine Liturgy no one work offers an overview of their history contents and structure. This volume offers for the first time an introduction to the major types of Byzantine liturgical books their taxonomy origins development and contents.