Writing letters and chronography in parallel: the case of Michael Glykas’ letter collection and Biblos Chronike in the 12th century

Eirini-Sophia Kiapidou

doi:10.1515/bz-2020-0036

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on the 12th-century Byzantine scholar Michael Glykas and the two main pillars of his multifarious literary production, Biblos Chronike and Letters, thoroughly exploring for the first time the nature of their interconnection. In addition to the primary goal, i. e. clarifying as far as possible the conditions in which these two works were written, taking into account their intertextuality, it extends the discussion to the mixture of features in texts of different literary genre, written in parallel, by the same author, based on the same material. By presenting the evidence drawn from the case of Michael Glykas, the paper attempts to stress the need to abandon the strictly applied taxonomical logic in approaching Byzantine Literature, as it ultimately prevents us from constitute the full mark of each author in the history of Byzantine culture.

Highlights

According to the traditional method of approaching Byzantine Literature, as applied – under the influence of classical philology – in the fundamental works of Karl Krumbacher,1 Herbert Hunger2 and Hans-Georg Beck3 and repro
This paper focuses on the 12th-century Byzantine scholar Michael Glykas and the two main pillars of his multifarious literary production, Biblos Chronike and Letters, thoroughly exploring for the first time the nature of their interconnection
By presenting the evidence drawn from the case of Michael Glykas, the paper attempts to stress the need to abandon the strictly applied taxonomical logic in approaching Byzantine Literature, as it prevents us from constitute the full mark of each author in the history of Byzantine culture

Summary

Introduction

According to the traditional method of approaching Byzantine Literature, as applied – under the influence of classical philology – in the fundamental works of Karl Krumbacher,1 Herbert Hunger2 and Hans-Georg Beck3 and repro-.

Results

Conclusion