IMC 2024: Sessions
Session 1126: Echoes of Chaos: Byzantine Literary Narratives of Crisis
Wednesday 3 July 2024, 11:15-12:45
| Organiser: | Zeynep Olgun, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Zeynep Olgun, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 1126-a | Geographical Imagination of Crete in the Times of Crises: A Lair of Despair or a Lost Homeland? (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval and Language and Literature - Greek |
| Paper 1126-b | Signalling Imminent Catastrophe: Michael Choniates on Imperial Collapse in Greece before 1204 (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval and Language and Literature - Greek |
| Paper 1126-c | The Dissemination of the Histories of Chalkokondyles: Turning Crisis into an Opportunity (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Historiography - Medieval and Language and Literature - Greek |
| Abstract | Byzantium endured numerous crises over its long history, from the conflict in the Aegean against the Muslims, to the Fourth Crusade of 1204, before succumbing to its final crisis—the 1453 siege of Constantinople. These confrontations did not only affect the governance and maintenance of the Empire, but also left an imprint in the literary production of the respective periods. In this session, we will look at Byzantine literary narratives of crisis, taking a comparative perspective that focuses on how authors represented and described the physical settings of crisis. Our primary objective is to understand how the interplay between the authors, the spaces they wrote about, and the crises they depicted in their literary works influenced the development and dissemination of their narratives. |