The Routledge Handbook of Rewriting in Byzantium

The Routledge Handbook of Rewriting in Byzantium presents an overview of the various rewriting processes involved in the production of Byzantine literature. Due to the lack of recent systematic research on the totality of Byzantine literature, which embraces a long millennium of texts, the fluid concept of ’rewriting’, here studied for the first time in all its complexity, serves as a unifying criterion for understanding the literary task of the Byzantines. Literature in Byzantium went well beyond the problems of language and genre and was adapted according to the audience and the expectations of the readers, which varied greatly in different periods.

With contributions from 25 scholars, this book analyses and discusses a variety of topics, including the rewriting of the past, modes of persuasion as a driving force behind rewriting, changing muses, the adaptation of hagiography to changing patterns of behaviour, updating of technical texts, and the necessity for theological and philosophical reinterpretation of inherited texts.

This book will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in Byzantine literature, culture, and literary methods.

Juan Signes Codoñer is Professor of Greek at Complutense University (Spain). His research interests include Byzantine historiography, the Greek grammatical tradition, Byzantine law, and Homeric literacy. He is currently serving as President of the Spanish Association of Byzantine Studies (since 2017) and President of the research cluster Bósforo (Complutense University, since 2021).

Martin Hinterberger is Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus. His research interests include Byzantine biography and hagiography, medieval Greek as a literary language, Byzantine vernacular literature, Byzantine emotions, and editions of historiographical texts.

Inmaculada Pérez Martín is Research Professor at the Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas (CSIC, Spain). Her interests include Greek palaeography, the transmission of Ancient Greek texts, Komnenian and Palaiologan scholars, and Byzantine geography. She led the digitization of the Greek manuscripts of El Escorial DIGITESC project and is currently working on the political and public use of writing in the Byzantine world.