Saturday 5 November 2016

New Book!

Carolina Cupane & Bettina Krönung (eds.), Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond, Leiden: Brill 2016

Contents

This volume offers an overview of the rich narrative material circulating in the medieval Mediterranean. As a multilingual and multicultural zone, the Eastern Mediterranean offered a broad market for tales in both oral and written form and longer works of fiction, which were translated and reworked in order to meet the tastes and cultural expectations of new audiences, thus becoming common intellectual property of all the peoples around the Mediterranean shores. Among others, the volume examines for the first time popular eastern tales, such as Kalila and Dimna, Sindbad, Barlaam and Joasaph, and Arabic epics together with their Byzantine adaptations. Original Byzantine love romances, both learned and vernacular, are discussed together with their Persian counterparts and with later adaptations of western stories. This combination of such disparate narrative material aims to highlight both the wealth of medieval storytelling and the fundamental unity of the medieval Mediterranean world.

Contributors are Carolina Cupane, Faustina Doufikar-Aerts, Massimo Fusillo, Corinne Jouanno, Grammatiki A. Karla, Bettina Krönung, Renata Lavagnini, Ulrich Moennig, Ingela Nilsson, Claudia Ott, Oliver Overwien, Panagiotis Roilos, Julia Rubanovich, Ida Toth, Robert Volk, and Kostas Yiavis.    

Friday 4 November 2016

Public Lecture!

2016 Public Lecture in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks


Florin Curta
Professor of history at the University of Florida



Exactly who were the "nomads" mentioned in the writings of the Byzantine historians for nearly a millennium? Drawing on a wide range of archaeological and literary evidence, Florin Curta scrutinizes the identity and culture of the nomads in the 2016 Public Lecture in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks

Identities and Ideologies in the Medieval East Roman World , edited by Yannis Stouraitis, Edinburgh Byzantine Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh ...