Dialogues And Debates From Late Antiquity To Late Byzantium

"This is the first book to deal with the writing of literary and philosophical dialogues in Greek from the Roman empire to the end of Byzantium and beyond. Arranged in chronological order, 16 case studies combining theoretical approaches and in-depth analysis introduce a wide array of such dialogues, including consideration of the neighbouring Syriac, Georgian, and Armenian, as well as Latin traditions"--Provided by publisher

This book addresses a particular and little-known form of writing, the prose dialogue, during the Late Antique period, when Christian authors adopted and transformed the dialogue form to suit the new needs of religious debate. Connected to, but departing from, the dialogues of Classical Antiquity, these new forms staged encounters between Christians and pagans, Jews, Manichaeans, and "heretical" fellow Christians. At times fiction, at others records of, or scripts for, actual debates, the dialogues give us a glimpse of Late Antique rhetoric as it was practiced and tell us about the theological arguments underpinning religious differences. By offering the first comprehensive analysis of Christian dialogues in Greek and Syriac from the earliest examples to the end of the sixth century CE, the present volume shows that Christian authors saw the dialogue form as a suitable vehicle for argument and apologetic in the context of religious controversy and argues that dialogues were intended as effective tools of opinion formation in Late Antique society. Most Christian dialogues are little studied, and often in isolation, but they vividly evoke the religious debates of the time and they embody the cultural conventions and refinements that Late Antique men and women expected from such debates.

Averil Cameron refutes an argument by some scholars that Christians did not dialogue after a wall of silence came down in the fifth century AD. Cameron shows that in late antiquity and throughout Byzantium Christians debated and wrote philosophical, literary, and theological dialogues, and she makes a case for their centrality in Greek literature.

Late Antiquity, once known only as the period of protracted decline in the ancient world (Bas-Empire), has now become a major research area. In recent years, a wide-ranging historiographic debate on Late Antiquity has also begun. Replacing Gibbon’s categories of decline and decadence with those of continuity and transformation has not only brought to the fore the concept of the Late Roman period, but has made the alleged hiatus between the Roman, Byzantine and Mediaeval ages less important, while also driving to the margins the question of the end of the Roman Empire. This has broadened the scope of research on Late Antiquity enormously and made the issue of periodization of crucial significance. The resulting debate has escaped the confines of Europe and now embraces almost all historiographic cultures around the world. This book sheds new light on this debate, collecting papers given at the 22nd International Congress of Historical Sciences (CISH/ICHS) in Jinan, China. They recall key moments of the discovery of the world of Late Antiquity, and show how it is possible to reach a definition of an age, analysing different sectors of history, using disparate sources, and with the guidance of very varied interpretative models.

This book is a general and systematic study of the genre of dialogue in antiquity, investigating why dialogue matters.

This book addresses a particular and little-known form of writing, the prose dialogue, during the Late Antique period, when Christian authors adopted and transformed the dialogue form to suit the new needs of religious debate. Connected to, but departing from, the dialogues of Classical Antiquity, these new forms staged encounters between Christians and pagans, Jews, Manichaeans, and "heretical" fellow Christians. At times fiction, at others records of, or scripts for, actual debates, the dialogues give us a glimpse of Late Antique rhetoric as it was practiced and tell us about the theological arguments underpinning religious differences. By offering the first comprehensive analysis of Christian dialogues in Greek and Syriac from the earliest examples to the end of the sixth century CE, the present volume shows that Christian authors saw the dialogue form as a suitable vehicle for argument and apologetic in the context of religious controversy and argues that dialogues were intended as effective tools of opinion formation in Late Antique society. Most Christian dialogues are little studied, and often in isolation, but they vividly evoke the religious debates of the time and they embody the cultural conventions and refinements that Late Antique men and women expected from such debates.

Explores a Byzantine emperor's construction of authority with the help of his rhetorical texts Examines the changes in the Byzantine imperial idea by the end of the fourteenth century with a particular focus on the instrumentalization of the intellectual dimension of the imperial ruleIntegrates late Byzantine imperial visions into the bigger picture of Byzantine imperial ideology Provides a fresh understanding of key pieces of Byzantine public rhetoric and introduces analytical concepts from rhetorical, literary, and discursive theoriesOffers translations of key passages from late Byzantine rhetoricManuel II Palaiologos was not only a Byzantine emperor but also a remarkably prolific rhetorician and theologian. His oeuvre included letters, treatises, dialogues, short poems and orations. Florin Leonte deals with several of his texts shaped by a didactic intention to educate the emperor's son and successor, John VIII Palaiologos. He argues that the emperor constructed a rhetorical persona which he used in an attempt to compete with other contemporary power-brokers. While Manuel Palaiologos adhered to many rhetorical conventions of his day, he also reasserted the civic role of rhetoric. With a special focus on the first two decades of Manuel II Palaiologos' rule, 1391-1417, Leonte offers a new understanding of the imperial ethos in Byzantium by combining rhetorical analysis with investigation of social and political phenomena.

A Companion to Byzantine Epistolography offers the first comprehensive introduction and scholarly guide to the cultural practice and literary genre of letter-writing in the Byzantine Empire.