In twenty-five chapters by leading scholars, this volume propagates a nuanced understanding of Byzantine "literature", highlighting key problems, and presenting basic research tools for an audience of specialists and non-specialists.

Addresses the importance of ancient literature for Byzantine society and explores various ways of recycling and understanding ancient works.

The present volume collects contributions given at the First Postclassical Greek Conference Cologne (March 24–26, 2021), dealing with different topics related to the Greek language of the Postclassical period. In particular, it addresses the following issues: diachrony of the Greek language (e.g. as regards word order, negation, semantic shifts, counterfactuals); standardization processes; dialect convergence and linguistic change; linguistic innovation vs. reuse in literary Greek; layout of ancient texts in manuscripts. The papers include further elaborations with respect to their discussion within the activities of the DFG scientific network on Postclassical Greek (March 2022 – Feb. 2024) organized by the editors. The thirteen contributions aim at giving the readers new insights into this extremely complex and internally diverse stage of Greek, taking into consideration literary and documentary sources, New Testament Greek and inscriptions. Moreover, they show the productivity of the combination of philological and linguistic approaches when analyzing ancient languages.

This book offers the first complete overview of Byzantine poetry from the 4th to the 15th century. By bringing together 22 scholars, it explores the development of poetic trends and the interaction between poetry and society throughout the Byzantine millennium; it addresses a wide range of issues concerning the writing and reading of poetry (such as style, language, metrics, function, and circulation); and it surveys a large number of texts by looking closely at their place within the social and cultural milieus of their authors. Overall, the volume aims to enhance our understanding of Byzantine poetry and shed light on its important place in Byzantine literary culture. Contributors are Eirini Afentoulidou, Gianfranco Agosti, Roderick Beaton, Floris Bernard, Carolina Cupane, Kristoffel Demoen, Ivan Drpic, Jürgen Fuchsbauer, Antonia Giannouli, Martin Hinterberger, Wolfram Hörandner, Elizabeth Jeffreys, Michael Jeffreys, Marc Lauxtermann, Ingela Nilsson, Emilie van Opstall, Andreas Rhoby, Kurt Smolak, Foteini Spingou, Maria Tomadaki, Ioannis Vassis, Nikos Zagklas.

How can historical sociolinguistic analyses of Medieval Greek aid the interpretation of Medieval Greek texts? This is the main question that the papers collected in this volume aim to address. The term historical sociolinguistics (HSL), a discipline that combines linguistic, social, historical, and philological sciences, suggests that a language cannot be studied without its social dimension. Similarly, the study of a language in its social dimension is nothing else than the study of the communication which takes place between members of a given speech community by the means of written texts. These are seen as sets of shared signs used by authors to communicate to their audiences. This volume is divided into two distinct parts. In the first, Cuomo's and Bentein's papers aim to offer an overview on the discipline and examples of applied HSL. Valente's, Bianconi's, and Perez-Martin's papers will then show how to study the context of production and reception of Byzantine texts. These are followed by Horrocks' study on some features of Atticized Medieval Greek. In the second part, the contributions by Telelis, Odorico, and Manolova focus on the context of reception of the texts by Georgios Pachymeres, Theodoros Pediasimos, and Nikephoros Gregoras respectively.

The late Byzantine period (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries) was marked by both cultural fecundity and political fragmentation, resulting in an astonishingly multifaceted literary output. This book addresses the poetry of the empire’s final quarter-millennium from a broad perspective, bringing together studies on texts originating in places from Crete to Constantinople and from court to school, treating topics from humanist antiquarianism to pious self-help, and written in styles from the vernacular to Homeric language. It thus offers a reference work to a much-neglected but rich textual material that is as varied as it was potent in the sociocultural contexts of its times. Contributors are Theodora Antonopoulou, Marina Bazzani, Julián Bértola, Martin Hinterberger, Krystina Kubina, Marc D. Lauxtermann, Florin Leonte, Ugo Mondini, Brendan Osswald, Giulia M. Paoletti, Cosimo Paravano, Daniil Pleshak, Alberto Ravani, and Federica Scognamiglio.

The present volume is a Festschrift in honour of the distinguished Byzantinist Costas N. Constantinides. The title of the volume, Bibliophilos: Books and Learning in the Byzantine World, reflects Professor Constantinides’ major contribution to the fields of Greek palaeography, editions of Byzantine texts, Byzantine history, scholarship and education, and Cypriot manuscripts and culture. The volume is introduced by a preface and a tabula gratulatoria dedicated to the honorand, followed by twenty articles, written by seasoned and younger scholars, who are former colleagues and students of Professor Constantinides. These articles, which appear in alphabetical order, offer new material and shed fresh light to the study of Greek manuscripts, binders and scribes, and the life, works and activities of Byzantine scholars, teachers and students, providing editions of unpublished texts, including letters and poems, and exploring various aspects of Byzantine and Cypriot history, literature, art, science and culture. In the process the authors often challenge earlier views and offer new interpretations and insights. Bibliophilos is a book for the student, teacher and scholar of Byzantium in particular, and for every bibliophile in general.

Linguistic varieties such as female speech, foreigner talk, and colloquial language have not gone unnoticed when it comes to Classical Greek, but little is known about later periods of the Greek language. In this collective volume leading experts in the field outline some of the most important varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, basing themselves on a broad range of literary and documentary sources, and advancing a number of innovative methodologies. Close attention is paid to the linguistic features that characterize these varieties, with in-depth discussions of lexical, morpho-syntactic, orthographic, and metrical variation, as well as the interrelationship between these different types of variation. The volume thus offers valuable insights into the nature of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, laying the foundation for future studies of linguistic variation in these later stages of the language, while at the same time providing a point of comparison for Classical Greek scholarship

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’.

The present volume is a Festschrift in honor of the distinguished scholar in Late Byzantine, post-Byzantine and Cretan Renaissance studies I. Mavromatis. The title Kalligraphos is indicative of the foundations of his scholarship, which lie in the fields of paleography and early printing. With manuscripts and early printed books as the primary material of his studies, Professor Mavromatis has produced several major works in the fields of Byzantine philology, Cretan Renaissance literature (especially Erotorcritos) and late Byzantine vernacular poetry. This volume includes a short preface and twenty-four articles by senior and younger scholars, former colleagues, collaborators, and students of Professor Mavromatis. The articles are loosely arranged in chronological order of their subject matter and treat issues ranging from Byzantine historiography going back to the 4th century CE to post-Byzantine Cretan poetry of the 17th century. This philological kaleidoscope features new editions and interpretations of hitherto unknown or little-known poems and texts. The volume is intended for scholars, graduate and undergraduate students and the general readership interested in Byzantine and post-Byzantine literature.