The author and his narrative in twelfth-century Byzantium

The aim of this project is to finish a monograph on authorship in twelfth-century Constantinople. Greek literature flourished in the twelfth century, especially at the court of the capital Constantinople. Aspiring intellectuals and civil servants to be were trained in the Greek tradition that had been kept alive since late antiquity, which resulted in a large production of classicizing rhetoric and poetry. An administrative career often started with teaching, which could result in extensive and enduring networks with future colleagues and patrons. A large amount of commissioned works has come down to us and offers scholars the opportunity to map relations between authors and patrons as well as rhetorical and literary strategies. Even if this has allowed scholars to make great progress in recent years, we still miss a detailed study of an individual twelfth-century author and his entire production. Such an investigation would uncover not only individual strategies, but also the authorial relation to education, genre, patronage, audience and society. My monograph will cover this need with a case study of one of the central teachers and writers on command of the twelfth century: Konstantinos Manasses. By applying a narratological method on various levels I will analyse not just the preserved works by Manasses, but also his authorshop as a whole. The narrative I wish to map is the one that Manasses himself transmits through literary choices and self-referentiality.

Final report

The aim of this project was to finish a monograph on authorship in twelfth-century Byzantium, baseed on the preserved production of the teacher, historian and writer on commission Constantine Manasses. Such a detailed study of an individual author of the twelfth century is still missing and the monograph will therefore be the first of its kind. It has a partly narratological approach and has therefore been written in close dialogue with the research network ”Text and Narrative in Byzantium (RJ 2015-2017, see separate report). My focus is not primarily on the empirical author Manasses, but on the model author as projected in his texts – the voice (style) that was recognizable to his audience and the person he wished to be seen as. Manasses’ production (as it has come down to us) consists of c. 25 texts from the late 1130s or early 1140s up to 1175. The preserved texts thus span an entire career and in spite of belonging to different genres and having been written for different occasions, they display a surprisingly clear authorial voice and a homogenous authorial narrative. My monograph wishes to show how such a voice was maintained during a long career, both rhetorically and narratolotically and in relation to the socio-cultural context of patronage and commission.
The book is now available in a first manuscript version under the title Constantine Manasses, Mercenary of the Pen: Occasional Literature in Twelfth-Century Byzantium. In the first semester of my sabbatical I spent three months in Vienna, where my position as visiting researcher at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften / Byzanzforschung had access to the excellent library and could discuss my project with colleagues. These months resulted in the first two chapterw that were sent to Oxford University Press (OUP) in June 2017 together with a formal book proposal. In October I received message that OUP is interested in publishing the book, and the main part of the autumn semester 2017 was spent in Paris, finishing the remaining chapters of the book. In the spring of 2018 I will revise and finish the manuscript in order to submit to OUP for peer review in May. Hopefully the book can be published in 2019.

Grant administrator

Uppsala University

Reference number

SAB16-0401:1

Amount

SEK 1,325,000

Funding

RJ Sabbatical

Subject

Specific Literatures

Year

2016

The author and his narrative in twelfth-century Byzantium

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