Greek Literature in the Byzantine Period

Greek Literature

Gregory Nagy, Gregory Nagy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136066269
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire

Edited with an introduction by an internationally recognized scholar, this nine-volume set represents the most exhaustive collection of essential critical writings in the field, from studies of the classic works to the history of their reception. Bringing together the articles that have shaped modern classical studies, the set covers Greek literature in all its genres--including history, poetry, prose, oratory, and philosophy--from the 6th century BC through the Byzantine era. Since the study of Greek literature encompasses the roots of all major modern humanities disciplines, the collection also includes seminal articles exploring the Greek influence on their development. Each volume concludes with a list of recommendations for further reading. This collection is an important resource for students and scholars of comparative literature, English, history, philosophy, theater, and rhetoric as well as the classics.

The Poverty of Écriture and the Craft of Writing: Towards a Reappraisal of the Prodromic Poems^*

Margaret Alexiou

It is the purpose of this paper to challenge some traditional assumptions about authorship and style in twelfth-century Byzantium, and to present a new, if tentative, interpretation of the fourth Prodromic Poem, which may have important implications for an understanding of literary perceptions of every-day life in twelfth-century Constantinople, as well as for the ways in which texts can be read.

1. The Author

All four Prodromic Poems present an apparent paradox, which is by no means unique. Probably our richest ‘low-style’ source of information from the twelfth century, they are consistently, if not quite unanimously, attributed by the manuscript tradition to Theodore Prodromos.¹ Known prolific writer for the Comnenian court of prose and verse texts of diverse genres and styles, his undisputed compositions are written in extreme or modified forms of learned Greek, with frequent use of several classical metres; none is in the vulgar Greek, combined with politikos stichos (fifteen-syllable accentual verse), of our four poems.² The question arises, could Theodore Prodromos have written them? Or does the use of popular language, in addition to what editors and most critics assume to be inconsistencies, repetitions and glaring contradictions, preclude such an established and acclaimed writer from authorship of a work so far ‘beneath his dignity?³ What makes the picture more complex, Theodore Prodromos is also considered a likely contestant, along with the front-running Nikolaos Kallikles, for the authorship of the Timarion, a high-style Lucianic dialogue, which, as has been argued elsewhere, ironically subverts certain aristocratic manners and ideals, while affording a wealth of insight into twelfth-century Constantinopolitan society.⁴ Is it conceivable that the same person could have written two such seemingly different kinds of text?

The question raises some fundamental problems of methdology and approach. First, can authorship be determined according to objective criteria, whether linguistic, metrical, stylistic, biographical or historical? Or is there a danger of imposing modern concepts of authorship and of linguistic or stylistic unity upon twelfth-century texts? Second, is the dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘low’ styles so absolute as has been assumed? Were they perhaps determined by genre and context rather than by the educational level of the individual author?

The first question has implications beyond the authorship of the four Prodromic poems. Michel Foucault has argued convincingly, albeit in general and theoretical terms, that both the concept and function of the ‘author’ have changed radically from antiquity and the middle ages to the present day, more particularly since the Renaissance.⁵ In the case of a substantial number of Byzantine texts, both learned and vernacular, which have been transmitted anonymously or dubiously, sometimes in differing versions, the attempt to fit an author to the text is demonstrably the work of subsequent scribes and scholars. Medieval tradition was content to ascribe authorship of any work which became famous to the most prominent exponent of the genre, as with those later hymn-writers who wove the acrostich ROMANOS THE MELODIST into their kontakia as a tribute to the master’s genius.⁶ Traditional attribution of a name to a work is no proof of authorship; nor does lack of attribution necessarily indicate oral composition, or a phase of oral transmission.⁷ In the case of Theodore Prodromos, the fact that subsequent tradition accredits him with authorship of our poems may be less relevant than the fact that the chronology of dateable elements in the poems is not inconsistent with that of his life, if Kazhdan’s revised, and well-substantiated, dates for his birth (around 1100) and death (late 1160’s or early 1170’s), are accepted.⁸ One thing is certain: neither the historian nor the literary critic can afford to wait until the drear question of authorship is solved before analysing the text, since, in the absence of new data, only close studies and comparison with other contemporary material can yield results.

A further point relevant to the question of authorship needs to be clarified at the outset: in dealing with a literary text, care should be taken to distinguish between author and ego- narrator.⁹ This elementary observation needs re-stating in view of persistent claims that, since each of the four poems assumes a different narrating persona, they cannot be the work of the same writer; or that Theodore Prodromos can be excluded on the grounds that, at the probable date of composition of the fourth poem, he would have been too old to be a student!¹⁰ Why assume that twelfth-century writers were less astute than ourselves in the structuring of their narratives and in the manipulation of narrative perspectives? In each of the four poems, the narrator adopts an exaggerated social position: (I) hen-pecked husband married above his social class; (II) impoverished father of a family of thirteen; (III) poor monk abused by abbot; (IV) destitute writer. The four cases are literary, not literal.

The second question — how absolute is the dichotomy between ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature? — perhaps needs redefining, since it presupposes that there is a valid literary distinction between texts in differing stylistic and linguistic registers. It is more relevant to examine how ‘reality’ is perceived and presented in fictive terms. Some traditional questions should be discarded, or inverted. Instead of asking, for example, ‘who is the author?’, ‘What do we know of when, where or why he wrote the text?’, ‘What is genuine and what can be interpolated in the manuscript tradition?’, it is possible to enquire, ‘How is the narrative structured, and from what perspectives?’, ‘What traditional topoi are employed, and how are they handled?’, ‘What allusions to other texts are made, and to what effects?’, ‘What historically dateable elements exist, and how can they be related to the dominant trends, or myths, of the time?’ These questions dictate that, for the present at least, the text is accepted as edited, with all its variant readings, and that judgement is suspended regarding its naive and discursive nature (according to present-day ‘high’ standards of realism and logic). Close analysis and extensive research along these lines can render this and other texts more, not less, accessible to modern readers.¹¹

2. The Text

Acc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Acknowledgments
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Introduction
• Volume Introduction
• Section A. Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives
• Section B. Registers and Styles
• Section C. “The Saint’s Life”
• Section D. Literary Renaissance
• Copyright Acknowledgments