Abstract
This paper examines representations of friendship and desire in the writings of the Constantinopolitan author Michael Psellos (1018–c.1078). Within the Byzantine context of strict Christian constraints regarding expressions of sexual desire, Psellos reconfigures the dominant late antique image of friendship as unity, inspired by divine authority, with the subversive model of erôs as the pursuit of bodily pleasures. Therewith, Psellian discourse may be regarded as representative of novel trends in eleventh-century Byzantium that anticipate the re-appearance of romantic fiction. As is argued here, such novel trends are to be understood within the context of Byzantium's continuous dialogue with its past, rather than as part of linear historiographical narratives.
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