1. Mullett, M.E., Theophylact Through his Letters: the Two Worlds of an Exile Bishop (Diss., Birmingham 1981) 1.Google Scholar

2. Gibbon, E., The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 53, ed. Bury, J.B., 3rd ed. (London 1907) VI, 107–8.Google Scholar

3. Jenkins, R.J.H., Dionysius Solomos (Cambridge 1940) 57.Google Scholar

4. Mango, C., Byzantine Literature as a Distorting Mirror (Inaugural Lecture, University of Oxford 1975) 4.Google Scholar

5. Hanawalt, E. Albu, ‘Dancing with Rhetoricians in the Gardens of the Muses: Notes on Recent Study and Appreciation of Byzantine Literature’, Byzantine Studies — Études Byzantines 13 (1986) 1–23.Google Scholar

6. See the fruits in print, e.g. ‘An Ikon of the Soul: the Byzantine Letter’, Visible Language 10 (1976) 197–226.

7. Dennis, G.T., The Letters of Manuel II Palaeologus (Dumbarton Oaks Texts, 4 [CFHB 8] Washington DC 1977) xviii–xx.Google Scholar

8. Dennis, G.T., ‘The Byzantines as Revealed in their Letters’, Gonimos: Neoplatonic and Byzantine Studies presented to Leendert G. Westerink at 75= Arethusa (Buffalo 1988) 159.Google Scholar

9. Mango, Distorting Mirror, 4.

10. Topping, E., ‘The Poet-Priest in Byzantium’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 14 (1969).Google Scholar

11. See for example the contributors to Mullett, M.E. and Scott, R., Byzantium and the Classical Tradition (Birmingham 1981).Google Scholar

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16. Russell, D.A. and Wilson, N.G., Menander Rhetor, edited with Translation and Commentary (Oxford 1981).Google Scholar

17. The best example is the recent work of Margaret Alexiou in the Byzantine field, notably ‘A Critical Reappraisal of Eusthathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias’, BMGS 3 (1977) 23–43; ‘Literary Subversion and the Aristocracy in Twelfth-century Byzantium: a Stylistic Analysis of the Timarion (ch 6–10)’, BMGS 8 (1982/3) 29–45; ‘The Poverty of Ecriture and the Craft of Writing; towards a Reappraisal of the Prodromic Poems’, BMGS 10 (1986) 1–40.

18. Magdalino, P., ‘The Literary Perception of Everyday Life in Byzantium: Some General Considerations and the Case of John Apokaukos’, BS 47 (1987) 23–38.Google Scholar

19. Yale Classical Studies, 27, eds. J.J. Winkler and G. Williams (1982).

20. Kazhdan, A., ‘Der Mensch in der byzantinischen Literaturgeschichte’, JÖB 28 (1979) 1–21 Google Scholar; with Constable, G., People and Power in Byzantium. An Introduction to Modern Byzantine Studies (Washington DC 1982)Google Scholar; with Franklin, S., Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge and Paris 1984)Google Scholar; with Epstein, A.W., Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985)Google Scholar. Of these, Studies on Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (hereafter Studies) is the most important, as a recently reworked set of essays written in the Soviet Union, reminding Western scholars both of the contribution of his Soviet colleagues and of the relative status of literature in their researches compared with the West.

21. Wilson, N., Scholars of Byzantium (London 1983) 1.Google Scholar

22. Kazhdan, Der Mensch.

23. For the literacy debate see Browning, R., ‘Literacy in the Byzantine World’, BMGS 4 (1978) 39–54 Google Scholar; Mango, C., Byzantium: the Empire of New Rome (London 1980) 237 ff.Google Scholar; Patlagean, E., ‘Discours écrit, discours parlé: niveaux dé culture à Byzance au VlIIe-XIe siècles’, Annales ESC 34 (1979) 264–278 Google Scholar; Oikonomidès, N., ‘Mount Athos; Levels of Literacy’, DOP 42 (1988) 167–178 Google Scholar. See the forthcoming The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge 1990).

24. On the Byzantine literary class see Kazhdan and Constable, People and Power, 101 ff.; H.G. Beck, Dosliterarische Schaffen der Byzantiner. Wege zu seinem Verständnis, Sitzungsberichte der Österr. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse 294, 4 Abh. (Vienna 1974); Mullett, M.E., ‘Aristocracy and Patronage in the Literary Circles of Comnenian Constantinople’, The Byzantine Aristocracy, IX-XIII Centuries, ed. Angold, M.J. (BAR, Int. Ser. 221, Oxford 1984) 173–201.Google Scholar

25. Byzantine Books and Bookmen. A Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium (Washington DC 1975).

26. For patronage see for example, Jeffreys, E., ‘The Sevastokratorissa Eirene as Literary Patroness: the Monk Iakovos’, JÖB 32/3 (1982) 63–71 Google Scholar. A. Kazhdan, ‘The Social Views of Michael Attaleiates’, Studies 23–86, is a devastatingly efficient example of the technique of social localisation.

27. Maguire, H., Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton 1981)Google Scholar; Macrides, R. and Magdalino, P., ‘The Architecture of Ekphrasis: Construction and Context of Paul the Silentiary’s poem on Hagia Sophia’, BMGS 12 (1989) 47–82 Google Scholar; E. James and R. Webb, ‘To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places; Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium’, forthcoming, breaks new ground.

28. Galatariotou, C., ‘Holy Women and Witches: Aspects of Byzantine Conceptions of Gender’, BMGS 9 (1984/5) 55–94 Google Scholar; ‘Eros and Thanatos: a Byzantine Hermit’s Conception of Sexuality’, BMGS 13 (1989) 95–137.

29. Of all this effort, the contribution of Australian scholars is perhaps the most impressive, particularly their model collaborative work. See History and Historians in Late Antiquity, eds. B. Croke and A. Emmett (Sydney and Oxford 1983); Reading the past in Late Antiquity, eds. G. Clarke, B. Croke, and R. Mortless (Canberra 1990); The Chronicle of John Malaias. A Translation, by E. Jeffreys, M. Jeffreys and R. Scott with B. Croke, J. Ferber, S. Franklin, A. James, D. Kelly, A. Moffatt, A. Nixon (Byzantine Australensia 4, Melbourne 1986); Studies in John Malaias, ed. E. Jeffreys with B. Croke and R. Scott (Byzantina Australensia 6, Sydney 1990).

30. E.g. Alexiou, S., (Athens 1984)Google Scholar; Galatariotou, C., ‘Structural Oppositions in the Grottaferrata Digenes Akritas’, BMGS 11 (1987) 29–68 Google Scholar; Magdalino, P., ‘Honour amongst Romaioi; the Framework of Social Values in the World of Digenes Akritas and Kekaumenos’, BMGS 13 (1989) 183–318.Google Scholar

31. E.g. Alexiou, The Poverty of Écriture.

32. Hagiographie studies are still dominated by Analecta Bollandiana and Subsidia Hagiographica, but see The Byzantine Saint, éd. S. Hackel (Birmingham 1981), and for an interdisciplinary approach to a single dossier and cult, see The Forty Martyrs of Sebasteia, eds. M.E. Mullett and A.M. Wilson (BBTT, 2, Belfast, forthcoming). There is still room for the purely literary approach to hagiography. For hymns see Szövérffy, J., A Guide to Byzantine Hymnography. A Classified Bibliography of Texts and Studies (Brookline, Mass., and Leyden 1978–9).Google Scholar

33. Patlagean, E., ‘Ancienne hagiographie byzantine et histoire sociale’, Annales ESC 23 (1968) 106–126.Google Scholar

34. P. Magdalino, ‘Byzantine Snobbery’, ed. M.J. Angold, The Byzantine Aristocracy, 58–78; C. Galatariotou, paper given to the XXIV Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Cambridge 1990.

35. Jauss, H.R., ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory’, New Literary History 2 (1970) 7–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This periodical was founded with the aim of reviving the then discredited practice of literary history, more soundly grounded in theory, rather than of replacing an older school.

36. Patlagean, E., Structure sociale, famille, chretienté à Byzance (London, Variorum 1981).Google Scholar

37. M. Alexiou, A Critical Reappraisal.

38. E. and Jeffreys, M., Popular Literature in Late Byzantium (London, Variorum 1983).Google Scholar

39. Roddy Beaton’s paper, ‘Reading Byzantine Literature’, is unpublished; for Michael Jeffreys’ see ‘Literary Theory and the Criticism of Byzantine Texts’ (abstract), Byzantine Studies in Australia Newsletter 24 (1990) 9.

40. Barthes, R., ‘The Death of the Author’, Image, Music, Text, tr. and ed. Heath, S. (London and New York 1977) 142–148.Google Scholar

41. See for example at one extreme all three books of Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (New York and Oxford 1971); Allegories of Reading: Figurai Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke and Proust (New Haven 1979); and especially The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York 1984); at another the International Society for the Study of Rhetoric was founded at Zurich in 1977; see Vickers, B., Rhetoric Revalued (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 19, Binghampton, New York 1982).Google Scholar

42. Bloom, H., The Anxiety of Influence: a Theory of Poetry (New York and London 1973).Google Scholar

43. Genette, G., Narrative Discourse, tr. Lewin, E. (Cornell 1980)Google Scholar; e.g. ed. Mitchell, W.J.T., On Narrative (Chicago 1980–1)Google ScholarPubMed; Stanzel, F.K., A Theory of Narrative, tr. Goetsche, C. (Cambridge 1984).Google Scholar

44. On classicists’ engagement with New Criticism see M.J. McGann, ‘Moral Dimensions and Critical Approaches in Horace’, Gymnasium, Beiheft 9, eds. H.W. Schmidt and P. Wülfing, Antikes Denken-Moderne Schule (Heidelberg 1988) 183–6. New Criticism was already seen as on the way to being passé by Segal, C., ‘Ancient Texts and Modern Literary Criticism’, Arethusa 1 (1968) 1–25.Google Scholar

45. The outlines of a debate on this subject can be traced in Liverpool Classical Monthly 10 (1985) 19–22 (A.D. Fitton-Brown); 48 (A.W.J. Holleman); 12 (1987) 23 (H. Hoffmann). But there is more to be said.

46. For an alternative view see my ‘Byzantium and the Slavs: the Views of Theophylact of Ochrid’, Miscellany in Memoriam Ivan Dujcev, ed. A. Djourova (Sofia, forthcoming).

47. See Anderson, W.S., ‘Roman Satires and Literary Criticism’, Bucknell Review 12 (1964) 106–113 Google Scholar (= Essays in Roman Satire [Princeton 1982] 3–10); McGann, M.J., Studies in Horace’s First Book of Epistles (Coll. Lat. 100, Brussels 1969) 96 and n. 1Google Scholar; Rudd, N., ‘Theory: Sincerity and Mask’, in Lines of Enquiry (Cambridge 1976) 145–181 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Against the use of persona: Lyne, R.O.A.M., The Latin Love Poets. From Catullus to Horace (Oxford 1980) viii.Google Scholar

48. Stock, B., ‘History, Literature, and Medieval Textuality’, Images of Power. Medieval History/Discourse/Literature, eds. Brownlee, K. and Nichols, S.G., in Yale French Studies 10 (1986) 7.Google Scholar

49. Jauss, , New Literary History 2 (1970) 24 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. This is a distinction of F.W. Bateson used helpfully by Fowler, A., Kinds of Literature. An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford 1982) 263–276.Google Scholar

51. New Historicism has been most clearly associated with recent work in renaissance English, see Pechter, E., ‘The New Historicism and its Discontents’, PMLA 102 (1987), 292–303 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but has affinities with much wider attempts to reconcile Marxism with formalism, or to seek new, historicist, alignments. See for example, Said, E., The World, the Text, and the Critic (London 1984)Google Scholar; Lentricchia, F., After the New Criticism (London 1980)Google Scholar; Poststructuralism and the Problem of History, eds. D. Attridge, G. Bennington and R. Young (Cambridge 1989). See Porter, C., ‘After the New Historicism’, New Literary History 21 (1990) 253–272, for a critique.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52. For an excellent anthology see Suleiman, S. and Crosman, I., The Reader in the Text. Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton, 1980)Google Scholar. Surveys by Holub, R.C., Reception Theory. A Critical Introduction (New York 1984)Google Scholar and E. Freund, The Return of the Reader. Reader-Response Criticism cover slightly wider ground than their titles imply. Grimm, G., Rezeptionsgeschichte (Munich 1977)Google Scholar taken with Warming, R., Rezeptionsaesthetik (Munich 1979)Google Scholar is useful; classic treatments are Jauss, H. R., Towards an Aesthetic of Reception, tr. Bahti, T. (Brighton 1982)Google Scholar; Iser, W., The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore 1974)Google Scholar; Eco, U., The Role of the Reader. Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (London 1981)Google Scholar; Fish, S., Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge Mass. 1980)Google Scholar. For reception theory and classics, see Arethusa 19.2 (1986).

53. Many of the most interesting suggestions in Cormack, R., Writing in Gold (London, 1985)Google Scholar are intentionalist; generic analysis may necessarily be so. A new study is needed.

54. Alexiou, ‘Literary Subversion’; Macrides, R., ‘Poetic Justice in the Patriarchate. Murder and Cannibalism in the Provinces’, Cupido Legum, eds. Burgmann, L., Schmink, M-Th Fogen, A. (Frankfurt 1985) 137–168.Google Scholar

55. Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 6, citing Benniston Gray and quoting Todorov as arguing that a true story can be viewed as if it were literature.

56. See The Greek Novel AD 1–1985, ed. R. Beaton (London 1988) especially the contributions of Charlotte Roueche and Roddy Beaton.

57. Hägg, T., The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford 1983) 75 Google Scholar: ‘Perhaps this time the pendulum has swung a bit too far in the positive direction’; Littlewood, A, ‘Romantic Paradises: the Role of the Garden in the Byzantine Romance’, BMGS 5 (1979) 95–114.Google Scholar

58. The appearance of two articles by Carolina Cupane in 1974 was an important turning point; ‘Un caso di giudizio di Dìo nel romanzo di Teodoro Prodromo’, Rivista di studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, n.s. 10–11 (1974) 147–168; la figura di Eros nel romanzo bizantino d’amore’, Atti del Accademia di Arti di Palermo, er. 4, 33/2 (1974) 243–297. Of all the recent Soviet scholarship, even including Ljubarskij, that of Polyakova has come closest to influencing work in the West; MacAlister, S., ‘Byzantine Twelfth-century romances: a Relative Chronology’, BMGS 15 (1991)Google Scholar forthcoming, deserves serious consideration.

59. E.g. ‘Imberios and Margarona; the Manuscripts, Sources and Edition of a Byzantine Verse Romance’, B 41 (1971) 122–160; ‘The Comnenian Background to the romans d’antiquité’, B 10 (1980) 455–486. Kazhdan, e.g. People and Power, 108 ff.

60. Perry, B.E., The Ancient Romances. A Literary-historical Account of their Origins (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967) 103 Google Scholar: ‘the slavish imitators of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus which were written in the twelfth century by such miserable pedants as Eustathius Macrembolites, Theodorus Prodromus and Nicetas Eugenianus, trying to write romance in what they thought was the ancient manner. Of these no account need be taken’.

61. Beaton, R., ‘Courtly Romances in Byzantium; a Case Study in Reception’, Mediterranean History Review 4 (1989) 345–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. R. Beaton, ‘Cappadocians at Court: Digenes and Timarion’, Alexios I Komnenos, Papers of the Second Belfast Byzantine Colloquium at Portaferry, eds. M.E. Mullett and D.C. Smythe (Belfast, forthcoming).

63. This idea was endemic to TM 6 (1976), and to Lemerle, P., Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantin (Paris 1977).Google Scholar

64. Cheynet, J.C., ‘Manzikiert: un désastre militaire?’, B 50 (1980) 410–438.Google Scholar

65. Clucas, L., The Trial of John ítalos and the Crisis of Intellectual Values in Byzantium in the Eleventh Century (Munich 1981)Google Scholar; Browning, R., ‘Enlightenment and Repression in Byzantium in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Past and Present 69 (1975) 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66. S. MacAlister, ‘Bakhtin’s Alien Speech and Twelfth-century Romances’, (abstract) Byzantine Studies in Australia, Newsletter, 9–10 appears to be a pioneering study.

67. Classicists have taken even more slowly to ‘after the New Criticism’ than they did to that approach, though I know of no published condemnation of theory, and the existence of one journal, Arethusa, from its first issue open to theory, is significant. Hellenists, particularly those with a wider than narrowly literary approach, have been more open than Latinists, where a watered-down New Citicism is still predominant, and students of poetic discourse have been more open than students of prose. See now though, Poststructuralist Classics, ed. A. Benjamin (Warwick Studies in Philosophy and Literature, London 1988) and History as Text, ed. Averil Cameron (London 1989). Stimulating general treatments are P. de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Theory and History of Literature 33 [Minneapolis 1986] and Against Theory. Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism, ed. W.J.T. Mitchell (Chicago and London 1985).

68. E.g. Lambropoulos, V., ‘Modern Greek Studies at the Crossroads; the Paradigm Shift from Empiricism to Skepticism’, JMGS 7 (1989) 1–39.Google Scholar

69. Haldon, J., ‘“Jargon” vs “the Facts”? Byzantine History-Writing and Contemporary Debates’, BMGS 9 (1984–5) 95–132 Google Scholar; Cormack, R., ‘“New Art History’ vs “Old History”: Writing Art History’, BMGS 10 (1986) 223–231.Google Scholar

70. Unpublished address to the XVII International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Washington 1986).

71. See my Aristocracy and Patronage and Cormack, R., The Byzantine Eye: Studies in Art and Patronage (London, Variorum 1989) esp. X.Google Scholar