The Routledge Handbook of Rewriting in Byzantium: (Routledge History Handbooks)

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

About the Author :
Juan Signes Codoñer is Professor of Greek at Complutense University (Spain). His research interests include Byzantine historiography, the Greek grammatical tradition, Byzantine law, and Homeric literacy. He is currently serving as President of the Spanish Association of Byzantine Studies (since 2017) and President of the research cluster Bósforo (Complutense University, since 2021). Martin Hinterberger is Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus. His research interests include Byzantine biography and hagiography, medieval Greek as a literary language, Byzantine vernacular literature, Byzantine emotions, and editions of historiographical texts. Inmaculada Pérez Martín is Research Professor at the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas (CSIC, Spain). Her interests include Greek palaeography, the transmission of Ancient Greek texts, Komnenian and Palaiologan scholars, and Byzantine geography. She led the digitization of the Greek manuscripts of El Escorial DIGITESC project and is currently working on the political and public use of writing in the Byzantine world.