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Chapter 2 - The Categories of ‘Originals’ and ‘Adaptations’ in Late Byzantine Romance

A Reassessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2018

By
Kostas Yiavis
Edited by
Adam J. Goldwyn  and
Ingela Nilsson
Adam J. Goldwyn
Affiliation:
North Dakota State University
Ingela Nilsson
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

All histories and reviews of vernacular Byzantine literature insist on a divide between the ‘original’ romances and the so-called seven translations. The originals are fresh, the argument goes, while each translation draws on one identifiable source, whether Western or Eastern. This chapter would like to challenge ‘originality’ as a sufficient category for vernacular Byzantine literature. Medieval writers were configured to apply themselves to authorities, and writers addressing more demanding audiences ‘authorized’ and ‘re- authorised’ sources even when writing ‘original’ works. Both translations and ‘original’ romances, it will be argued, used the same narrative strategies of appropriating and exploiting archetypes. In effect, there is no vernacular Byzantine ‘translation’ which is not a free adaptation which boldly resets its original.
Type
Chapter
Information
Reading the Late Byzantine Romance
A Handbook
 , pp. 19 - 39
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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Cupane, C. (ed.), Romanzi cavallereschi bizantini: Callimaco e Crisorroe, Beltandro e Crisanza, Storia di Achille, Florio e Plaziaflore, Storia di Apollonio di Tiro, Favola consolatoria sulla Cattiva e la Buona Sorte (Turin 1995), 228–305.Google Scholar
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