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This collection on Byzantine culture in translation, edited by Amelia Brown and Bronwen Neil, examines the practices and theories of translation inside the Byzantine empire and beyond its horizons to the east, north and west. The time span is from Late Antiquity to the present day. Translations studied include hagiography, history, philosophy, poetry, architecture and science, between Greek, Latin, Arabic and other languages. These chapters build upon presentations given at the 18th Biennial Conference of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, convened by the editors at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia on 28-30 November 2014. Contributors include: Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Amelia Brown, Penelope Buckley, John Burke, Michael Champion, John Duffy, Yvette Hunt, Maria Mavroudi, Ann Moffatt, Bronwen Neil, Roger Scott, Michael Edward Stewart, Rene Van Meeuwen, Alfred Vincent, and Nigel Westbrook.
The survival of ancient Greek historiography is largely due to its preservation by Byzantine copyists and scholars. This process entailed selection, adaptation, and commentary, which shaped the corpus of Greek historiography in its transmission. By investigating those choices, Kaldellis enables a better understanding of the reception and survival of Greek historical writing. Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians includes translations of texts written by Byzantines on specific ancient historians. Each translated text is accompanied by an introduction and notes to highlight the specific context and purpose of its composition. In order to present a rounded picture of the reception of Greek historiography in Byzantium, a wide range of genres have been considered, such as poems and epigrams, essays, personalized scholia, and commentaries. Byzantine Readings of Ancient Historians is therefore an important resource for scholars and students of ancient history.
What happened to ancient Greek thought after Antiquity? What impact did Abrahamic religions have on medieval Byzantine and Islamic scholars who adapted and reinvigorated this ancient philosophical heritage? Reason and Revelation in Byzantine Antioch tackles these questions by examining the work of the eleventh-century Christian theologian Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, who undertook an ambitious program of translating Greek texts, ancient and contemporary, into Arabic. Poised between the Byzantine Empire that controlled his home city of Antioch and the Arabic-speaking cultural universe of Syria-Palestine, Egypt, Aleppo, and Iraq, Ibn al-Fadl engaged intensely with both Greek and Arabic philosophy, science, and literary culture. Challenging the common narrative that treats Christian and Muslim scholars in almost total isolation from each other in the Middle Ages, Alexandre M. Roberts reveals a shared culture of robust intellectual curiosity in the service of tradition that has had a lasting role in Eurasian intellectual history.
The Christian culture of Rus (the medieval precursor of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) is sometimes presented either as a reflection of an indigenous spirituality wrapped in borrowed (Byzantine) forms or, by contrast, as merely a provincial version of its Byzantine original. The essays in this volume start from the premise that neither view is adequate. The history of culture - even of a self-consciously imitative culture - involves a continual process of inevitable 'mistranslation', as the imported models are reshaped and reinterpreted according to local resources, circumstances and preconceptions. These essays explore aspects of the 'translation of culture' on several levels: from the semantic processes of the actual translation of written texts from Greek into Slavonic, through to larger issues of ideology and identity. They consider both the initial stages of such 'translation' (from Byzantium to Rus) and some of the subsequent 'retranslations' of the Byzantine heritage in the culture of Rus and - eventually - of Russia.
Dreambooks in Byzantium offers for the first time in English translation and with commentary six of the seven extant Byzantine oneirocritica, or manuals on the interpretation of dreams. (The seventh, The Oneirocriticon of Achmet ibn Sereim was published previously by the author.) Dreams permeated all aspects of Byzantine culture, from religion to literature to everyday life, while the interpretation of the future through dreams was done by professionals (emperors had their own) or through oneirocritica. Dreambooks were written and attributed to famous patriarchs, biblical personages, and emperors, to fictitious writers and interpreters, or were copied and published anonymously. Two types of dreambooks were produced: short prose or verse manuals, with the dreams usually listed alphabetically by symbol; and long treatises with subject matter arranged according to topics and with elaborate dream theory. The manuals were meant for a popular audience, mainly readers of the middle and lower classes; their content deals with concerns like family, sickness and health, poverty and wealth, treachery by friends, fear of authorities, punishment and honor-concerns, in other words, that pertain to the individual dreamer, not to the state or a cult. The dreambook writers drew upon various sources in Classical and Islamic literature, oral and written Byzantine materials, and, perhaps, their own oneirocritic practices. Much of the source-material was pagan in origin and, therefore, needed to be reworked into a Christianized context, with many interpretations given a Christian coloring. For each dreambook the author provides a commentary focusing on analyses of the interpretations assigned to each dream-symbol; historical, social, and cultural discussions of the dreams and interpretations; linguistic, lexical, and grammatical issues; and cross-references with Achmet, Artemidorus, and the other Bzyantine dreambooks. There are also introductory chapters on Byzantine dream interpretation; the authors, their dates, and sources; the manuscripts of the dreambooks; and a lengthy discussion of the contribution of these dreambooks to psychohistory, cultural history, historical sociology, and gender studies. The book is unique in that it offers a full study, through translation and commentary, of the oneirocritica to a wide audience - Byzantinists, Arabists, cultural historians, medievalists (several of the Byzantine dreambooks were translated into Latin and became fundamental dream-texts throughout the Middle Ages), and psychohistorians, all of whom will find the book useful in their study of dreams, transmission of Arabic sources by Byzantine authors, and cultural anthropology. Together with the Oneirocriticon of Achmet, it offers a complete study of dream-interpretation in medieval Greece.
Byzantium lasted a thousand years, ruled to the end by self-styled 'emperors of the Romans'. It underwent kaleidoscopic territorial and structural changes, yet recovered repeatedly from disaster: even after the near-impregnable Constantinople fell in 1204, variant forms of the empire reconstituted themselves. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492 tells the story, tracing political and military events, religious controversies and economic change. It offers clear, authoritative chapters on the main events and periods, with more detailed chapters on outlying regions and neighbouring societies and powers of Byzantium. With aids such as maps, a glossary, an alternative place-name table and references to English translations of sources, it will be valuable as an introduction. However, it also offers stimulating new approaches and important findings, making it essential reading for postgraduates and for specialists. The revised paperback edition contains a new preface by the editor and will offer an invaluable companion to survey courses in Byzantine history.
With the accession of the Arab dynasty of the 'Abbasids to power and the foundation of Baghdad, a Graeco-Arabic translation movement was initiated, and by the end of the tenth century, almost all scientific and philosophical secular Greek works that were available in late antiquity had been translated into Arabic. This book explores the social, political and ideological factors operative in early 'Abbasid society that sustained the translation movement.
Julian, the last pagan emperor of the Roman empire, died in war in 363. In the Byzantine (that is, the Eastern Roman) empire, the figure of Julian aroused conflicting reactions: antipathy towards his apostasy but also admiration for his accomplishments, particularly as an author writing in Greek. Julian died young, and his attempt to reinstate paganism was a failure, but, paradoxically, his brief and unsuccessful policy resonated for centuries. This book analyses Julian from the perspectives of Byzantine Culture. The history of his posthumous reputation reveals differences in cultural perspectives and it is most intriguing with regard to the Eastern Roman empire which survived for almost a millennium after the fall of the Western empire. Byzantine culture viewed Julian in multiple ways, first as the legitimate emperor of the enduring Roman empire; second as the author of works written in Greek and handed down for generations in the language that scholars, the Church, and the state administration all continued to use; and third as an open enemy of Christianity. Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture will appeal to both researchers and students of Byzantine perspectives on Julian, Greco-Roman Paganism, and the Later Roman Empire, as well as those interested in Byzantine Historiography.
A leading historian argues that in the empire we know as Byzantium, the Greek-speaking population was actually Roman, and scholars have deliberately mislabeled their ethnicity for the past two centuries for political reasons. Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself “Byzantine.” And while the identities of minorities in the eastern empire are clear—contemporaries speak of Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and Muslims—that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations. Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that Byzantium’s ethnic majority, no less than the ruler of Constantinople, would have identified as Roman. It was an identity so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans would eventually adopt it. But Western scholarship has a long tradition of denying the Romanness of Byzantium. In Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis investigates why and argues that it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously. In the Middle Ages, he explains, people of the eastern empire were labeled “Greeks,” and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and became “Byzantine.” Only when we understand that the Greek-speaking population of Byzantium was actually Roman will we fully appreciate the nature of Roman ethnic identity. We will also better understand the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign and minority groups into the dominant ethnic group, the Romans who presided over the vast multiethnic empire of the east.
Studies on the reception of the classical tradition are an indispensable part of classical studies. Understanding the importance of ancient civilization means also studying how it was used subsequently. This kind of approach is still relatively rare in the field of Byzantine Studies. This volume, which is the result of the range of interests in (mostly) non-English-speaking research communities, takes an important step to filling this gap by investigating the place and dimensions of ’Byzantium after Byzantium’. This collection of essays uses the idea of ’reception-theory’ and expands it to show how European societies after Byzantium have responded to both the reality, and the idea of Byzantine Civilisation. The authors discuss various forms of Byzantine influence in the post-Byzantine world from architecture to literature to music to the place of Byzantium in modern political debates (e.g. in Russia). The intentional focus of the present volume is on those aspects of Byzantine reception less well-known to English-reading audiences, which accounts for the inclusion of Bulgarian, Czech, Polish and Russian perspectives. As a result this book shows that although so-called 'Byzantinism' is a pan-European phenomenon, it is made manifest in local/national versions. The volume brings together specialists from various countries, mainly Byzantinists, whose works focus not only on Byzantine Studies (that is history, literature and culture of the Byzantine Empire), but also on the influence of Byzantine culture on the world after the Fall of Constantinople.