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Chapter 9 - Troy in Byzantine Romances

Homeric Reception in Digenis Akritis, the Tale of Achilles and the Tale of Troy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2018

Adam J. Goldwyn
Affiliation:
North Dakota State University
Ingela Nilsson
Affiliation:
Uppsala Universitet, Sweden
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Summary

This chapter examines the Palaiologan romances as examples of the different modes of Homeric reception in Byzantium. It begins by analyzing Digenis Akritis, demonstrating how Homeric motifs, narratological practices, allusions and references elevate the Byzantine hero to the status of Homeric hero and place the work within a broader tradition of heroic writing in Greek. In this, Digenis Akritis differs from the other works under consideration, the Tale of Achilles and the Tale of Troy, both of which retell parts of the Trojan War narrative, though with differing degrees of familiarity with the Homeric epics themselves. The paper concludes that Homeric influence on the Palaiologan romances was pervasive, though its influence is as often oblique and referential as direct and explicit.
Type
Chapter
Information
Reading the Late Byzantine Romance
A Handbook
, pp. 188 - 210
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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Goldwyn, A. J. (trans.), ‘Arthur in the East: Cross-Cultural Translations of Arthurian Romance in Greek and Hebrew, with a New Translation of “Ὁ Πρεσβύς Ἱπποτές (The Old Knight)”’, LATCH: The Journal of Literary Artifacts in Theory, Culture and History 5 (2012), 75105.Google Scholar

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