Decoding Byzantine ekphraseis on works of art. Constantine Manasses’s description of earth and its audience

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicky Foskolou
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Reception Theory ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
Intended Reader ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The One ◽  
Horizon Of Expectations ◽  
Early Byzantine

Abstract The study deals with ekphraseis on works of art and poses the question as to how far these texts can be a reliable source for the study or even the reconstruction of the artefacts they describe. Based on reception theory and readerresponse criticism, in the paper is proposed that as every text, byzantine ekphraseis on artworks presuppose an audience or readership, i. e. the one the author had in mind and on the basis of which he encoded his message. In order to decode this message and by extension to extract any information about the described works of art we must aim to discover their “intended reader”, and identify his or her “horizon of expectations. This proposal is tested in the study of a well known piece of this kind, Manasses’s description of a mosaic floor with a depiction of Earth. The author’s dialogue with the earlier tradition of ekphraseis, his readership’s “horizon of expectations” combined with historical facts, allow us to suppose that Manasses is describing a composition with Xenia scenes and an asarotos motif (unswept floor) created in the early byzantine period and preserved in the Great Palace of Constantinople up to the twelfth century.

scholarly journals The Early Byzantine and Khazar Periods in the Evolution of the Towns on the Inner Mountain Ridge in the Crimea

2021 ◽  
pp. 475-497
Author(s):  
Alexander I. Aibabin
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Mountain Ridge ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Byzantine

From the large-scale archaeological researches of individual urban centres located on the Inner Mountain Ridge of the Crimea, atop of the plateaus of Mangup, Eski-Kermen, and Bakla, there are enough reasons to identify and reconstruct the Early Byzantine and Khazar Periods in the evolution of these towns. The analysis of written sources and materials of archaeological excavations allows the one to substantiate the chronology of the two initial periods in the history of the evolution of the towns located on the Inner Mountain Ridge as: 1 – Early Byzantine, from 582 AD to the early eighth century; 2 – Khazar, from the early eighth century to 841 AD. In the early sixth century, there was the only oppidum or civitatium Dory known in the region in question. Obviously, its fortifications were built by the Goths living atop of the plateau of Mangup from the mid-third century on. In the Early Byzantine Period, in the late sixth century, when the region of Dory was incorporated into the Empire’s borderland province, military engineers realised the state-sponsored program and constructed fortifications and a church in the castle (κάστρον) of Δόροϛ and fortified towns of various types (πόλισμα) atop of the mountains of Eski-Kermen and Bakla. Although the engineers immediately planned and constructed fortifications, access roads, gates, sally ports, a church, streets, and other objects on a greater part of the uninhabited plateau of Eski-Kermen, only the citadel was built on the already inhabited terrace of the plateau of Bakla. In the Khazar Period, Δόροϛ kept the status of the capital of Gothia and the bishop’s see. At Eski-Kermen there probably was an archon supervising the building of the town according to a single plan, while at Bakla there appeared suburban area covered by residential houses. The archontes of the towns located atop of Eski-Kermen and Bakla were civil and church governors of the klimata, just as their predecessors had done earlier.

scholarly journals Turbulent Ethnopolitical Processes in the Eastern Taurica in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Viktor N. Zin’ko ◽  
Alexey V., Zin’ko
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Urban Buildings ◽  
Seasonal Migrations ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Scanty Information ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Byzantine

This paper presents the results of archaeological researches allowing the one to reconstruct ethnopolitical processes in the eastern Taurica in the sixth and seventh centuries. By the sixth century, the eastern Crimean steppes were depopulated and used for seasonal migrations of the Hunnic tribes. The Byzantine Empire made a significant influence on the ethnopolitical processes in the Bosporos in the sixth and seventh centuries when annexed this country in 527/528. Archaeological researches supply scanty information about the urban buildings of the Bosporan capital in the sixth century. Alternative archaeological situation developed with the preserved Early Byzantine layers of the Bosporan town of Tyritake, where continuous many-year-long archaeological research uncovered large areas. According to the archaeological materials and a few epigraphic finds, Bosporan Greeks constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of Tyritake in the sixth century as before, being mostly the persons of moderate means, engaged in fishing and agricultural production, crafts and petty trade. After the raid of the Turks in 576, Bosporos and Tyritake declined, with only isolated residential houses reconstructed in certain areas in these towns; these houses lived to the third quarter of the seventh century when they were burned down by the Khazars. Bosporos constantly experienced the pressure from nomadic hordes, which, over the centuries, moved here and there, replacing each other, along the great tract of the steppes. The turbulence of ethnopolitical processes in the Eastern Taurica especially intensified in the Early Byzantine Period. Following the Khazar devastation, all the Bosporan settlements were depopulated, and the insignificant remnants of the former population concentrated in the fire-ravaged town of Bosporos, which for centuries became an out-of-the-way provincial town forming a part of different polities.

scholarly journals The Inscription on a Brick from Grodno (Ps 45: 6) in the Context of Byzantine-Russian Epigraphic Links

Slovene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 412-422
Author(s):  
Andrey Yu. Vinogradov ◽  
Aleхey A. Gippius ◽  
Natallia A. Kiziukevich
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Great Role ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Hagia Sophia ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Byzantine ◽  
Church Buildings

The authors publish a unique inscription with the second half-verse of Psalm 45: 6 on а 12th century brick from the excavations of the “Mernaya izba” on the Castle hill of Hrodna (Grodno; Republic of Belarus). The tradition of writing Psalm 45: 6 in church buildings goes back to the Early Byzantine period and is associated with its “apotropaic” character, which should protect the building from earthquakes. From the middle Byzantine period Psalm 45: 6 is known to also appear on bricks. A great role in this tradition was played by the “Diegesis about the Great church”, according to which Psalm 45: 6 was written by order of Justinian on the plinth bricks of Hagia Sophia. From Byzantium, this tradition came to Rus’, where we see Psalm 45: 6 written, on the one hand, in Greek on the mosaic above the apse of St. Sophia in Kiev, and on the other hand, in Slavonic on a plinth brick from a church in Hrodna dating from the second half of the 12th century.

THE ROLE OF ANTHROPONYMS IN THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF ARTISTIC WORKS

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (29) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Lidiya Derbenyova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Minor Part ◽  
The One ◽  
A Minor ◽  
And Storage ◽  
Horizon Of Expectations

The article explores the role of antropoetonyms in the reader’s “horizon of expectation” formation. As a kind of “text in the text”, antropoetonyms are concentrating a large amount of information on a minor part of the text, reflecting the main theme of the work. As a “text” this class of poetonyms performs a number of functions: transmission and storage of information, generation of new meanings, the function of “cultural memory”, which explains the readers’ “horizon of expectations”. In analyzing the context of the literary work we should consider the function of antropoetonyms in vertical context (the link between artistic and other texts, and the groundwork system of culture), as well as in the context of the horizontal one (times’ connection realized in the communication chain from the word to the text; the author’s intention). In this aspect, the role of antropoetonyms in the structure of the literary text is extremely significant because antropoetonyms convey an associative nature, generating a complex mechanism of allusions. It’s an open fact that they always transmit information about the preceding text and suggest a double decoding. On the one hand, the recipient decodes this information, on the other – accepts this as a sort of hidden, “secret” sense.

Metamorphosen des Autors im Internet

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Julia Genz
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Periodic Schedule ◽  
Literary Authorship ◽  
The One ◽  
Death Of The Author

Digital media transform social options of access with regard to producers, recipients, and literary works of art themselves. New labels for new roles such as »prosumers « and »wreaders« attest to this. The »blogger« provides another interesting new social figure of literary authorship. Here, some old desiderata of Dadaism appear to find a belated realization. On the one hand, many web 2.0 formats of authorship amplify and widen the freedom of literary productivity while at the same time subjecting such production to a periodic schedule. In comparison to the received practices of authors and recipients many digital-cultural forms of narrating engender innovative metalepses (and also their sublation). Writing in the net for internet-publics enables the deliberate dissolution of the received autobiographical pact with the reader according to which the author’s genuine name authenticates the author’s writing. On the other hand, the digital-cultural potential of dissolving the autobiographical pact stimulates scandals of debunking and unmasking and makes questions of author-identity an issue of permanent contestation. Digital-cultural conditions of communication amplify both: the hideand- seek of authorship as well as the thwarting of this game by recipients who delight in playing detective. In effect, pace Foucault’s and Barthes’ postulates of the death of the author, the personality and biography of the author once again tend to become objects of high intrinsic value

Bastard Feudalism and the Framing of Thirteenth-Century England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Coss
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.

Plausibility and Aesthetic Interpretation

1977 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Dutton
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
The Other ◽  
Inquiry Science ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Logical Structures ◽  
The One

If a catalogue were made of terms commonly used to affirm the adequacy of critical interpretations of works of art, one word certain to be included would be “plausible.” Yet this term is one which has received precious little attention in the literature of aesthetics. This is odd, inasmuch as I find the notion of plausibility central to an understanding of the nature of criticism. “Plausible” is a perplexing term because it can have radically different meanings depending on the circumstances of its employment. ln the following discussion, I will make some observations about the logic of this concept in connection with its uses in two rather different contexts: the context of scientific inquiry on the one hand, and that of aesthetic interpretation on the other. In distinguishing separate senses of “plausible,” I shall provide reason to resist the temptation to imagine that because logical aspects of two different types of inquiry—science and criticism—happen to be designated by the same term, they may to that extent be considered to have similar logical structures.

Bodily Adornment and Modification in Byzantium

2021 ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Alicia Walker
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

Focusing on Early and Middle Byzantine (fourth-to-twelfth-century) objects, images, and texts, this essay explores the tension between, on the one hand, efforts of the Byzantine church and state to discourage and control bodily adornment and modification and, on the other hand, the extensive evidence of widespread and immoderate engagement with these practices. The enhancement and manipulation of Byzantine bodies is considered as both a real and a metaphoric phenomenon. Evidence culled from secular and sacred, written and material sources demonstrates the importance of bodily adornment and modification to our understanding of Byzantine material and visual culture.

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