Byzantine Literature - Sources

Sources

There is no comprehensive history of Byzantine literature written in English, although the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium provides excellent coverage of individual authors and topics. The chapters of Horrocks that cover the medieval period are useful for the "language question." The History of Kazhdan covers only the early period. Beaton and Lauxtermann are useful on "low" and "high" verse, respectively.

The study of Byzantine literature as a self-sufficient discipline originated in the German-speaking world, and the most important general surveys are written in this language. Beck and Hunger remain the standard works on theological and secular literature, respectively, although Krumbacher and Moravcsik are still valuable. Rosenqvist is a recent and useful introduction to the subject.

  • R. Beaton, The medieval Greek romance (Cambridge, 1989). ISBN 0-521-33335-0.
  • H.-G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (=Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 12,2,1) (Munich, 1977). ISBN 3-406-01416-X.
  • G. Horrocks, Greek: a history of the language and its speakers (London, 1997). ISBN 0-582-30709-0.
  • H. Hunger, Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner (=Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 12,5) (Munich, 1978) . ISBN 3-406-01427-5; ISBN 3-406-01428-3.
  • A.P. Kazhdan, A history of Byzantine literature (650-850) (Athens, 1999). ISBN 960-371-010-5.
  • K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (Munich, 1897).
  • M.D. Lauxtermann, Byzantine poetry from Psides to Geometres (Vienna, 2003). ISBN 3-7001-3150-X.
  • G. Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica (Berlin, 1958) (A deceptive title: in fact the most important history of Byzantine secular literature before Hunger).
  • Panagiotis Roilos, 'Amphoteroglossia': A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medieval Greek Novel (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).
  • J. Rosenqvist, Die byzantinische Literatur: vom 6. Jahrhundert bis zum Fall Konstantinopels 1453 (Berlin, 2007). ISBN 978-3-11-018878-3.

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