Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium

by Averil Cameron (Editor), Niels Gaul (Editor)

Overview

Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium offers the first overall discussion of the literary and philosophical dialogue tradition in Greek from imperial Rome to the end of the Byzantine empire and beyond. Sixteen case studies combine theoretical approaches with in-depth analysis and include comparisons with the neighbouring Syriac, Georgian, Armenian and Latin traditions. Following an introduction and a discussion of Plutarch as a writer of dialogues, other chapters consider the Erostrophus, a philosophical dialogue in Syriac, John Chrysostom’s On Priesthood, issues of literariness and complexity in the Greek Adversus Iudaeos dialogues, the Trophies of Damascus, Maximus Confessor’s Liber Asceticus and the middle Byzantine apocryphal revelation dialogues. The volume demonstrates a new frequency in middle and late Byzantium of rhetorical, theological and literary dialogues, concomitant with the increasing rhetoricisation of Byzantine literature, and argues for a move towards new and exciting experiments. Individual chapters examine the Platonising and anti-Latin dialogues written in the context of Anselm of Havelberg’s visits to Constantinople, the theological dialogue by Soterichos Panteugenos, the dialogues of Niketas ‘of Maroneia’ and the literary dialogues by Theodore Prodromos, all from the twelfth century. The final chapters explore dialogues from the empire’s Georgian periphery and discuss late Byzantine philosophical, satirical and verse dialogues by Nikephoros Gregoras, Manuel II Palaiologos and George Scholarios, with special attention to issues of form, dramatisation and performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472489357
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/16/2017
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Averil Cameron taught at King’s College London and was subsequently Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History in Oxford and Warden of Keble College. She held a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship to work on Greek dialogues in late antiquity and Byzantium. Niels Gaul is the A. G. Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

AVERIL CAMERON AND NIELS GAUL

1 Plutarch’s dialogues: beyond the Platonic example?

ELENI KECHAGIA-OVSEIKO

2 Erostrophus, a Syriac dialogue with Socrates on the soul

ALBERTO RIGOLIO

3 The rhetorical mechanisms of John Chrysostom’s On Priesthood

ALBERTO J. QUIROGA PUERTAS

4 Literary distance and complexity in late antique and early Byzantine Greek dialogues Adversus Iudaeos

PATRICK ANDRIST

5 Prepared for all occasions: the Trophies of Damascus and the Bonwetsch Dialogue

PETER VAN NUFFELEN

6 New wine in old wineskin: Byzantine reuses of the apocryphal revelation dialogue

PÉTER TÓTH

7 Dialogical pedagogy and the structuring of emotions in Liber

Asceticus

IOANNIS PAPADOGIANNAKIS

8 Anselm of Havelberg’s controversies with the Greeks: a moment in the scholastic culture of disputation

ALEX J. NOVIKOFF

9 A Platonising dialogue from the twelfth century: the logos of Soterichos Panteugenos

FOTEINI SPINGOU

10 The six dialogues by Niketas ‘of Maroneia’: a contextualising introduction

ALESSANDRA BUCOSSI

11 Theodore Prodromos in the Garden of Epicurus

ERIC CULLHED

12 ‘Let us not obstruct the possible’: dialoguing in medieval Georgia

NIKOLOZ ALEKSIDZE

13 Embedded dialogues and dialogical voices in Palaiologan prose and verse

NIELS GAUL

14 Nikephoros Gregoras’s Philomathes and Phlorentios

DIVNA MANOLOVA

15 Dramatisation and narrative in late Byzantine dialogues:

Manuel II Palaiologos’s On Marriage and Mazaris’ Journey to Hades

FLORIN LEONTE

16 Form and content in the dialogues of Gennadios Scholarios

GEORGE KARAMANOLIS

Bibliography

Index