Writer and Occasion in Twelfth-Century Byzantium
The Authorial Voice of Constantine Manasses

The first comprehensive study of occasional writing in Byzantium, focusing on the literary output of Constantine Manasses.

Ingela Nilsson (Author)

9781108824262, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 March 2022

231 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.318 kg

'Here is a brilliantly written book that demonstrates an in-depth knowledge of the work of Constantin Manassès, while going off the beaten track to throw a new look at his writing.' Anna Lampadaridi, Review of Byzantine Studies

In twelfth-century Constantinople, writers worked on commission for the imperial family or aristocratic patrons. Texts were occasioned by specific events, representing both a link between writer and patron and between literary imagination and empirical reality. This is a study of how one such writer, Constantine Manasses, achieved that aim. Manasses depicted and praised the present by drawing from the rich sources of the Graeco-Roman and Biblical tradition, thus earning commissions from wealthy 'friends' during a career that spanned more than three decades. While the occasional literature of writers like Manasses has sometimes been seen as 'empty rhetoric', devoid of literary ambition, this study assumes that writing on command privileges originality and encourages the challenging of conventions. A society like twelfth-century Byzantium, in which occasional writing was central, called for a strong and individual authorial presence, since voice was the primary instrument for a successful career.

1. The authorial voice of occasional literature
2. Praising the emperor, visualizing his city
3. The occasion of death: patronage and the writer on command
4. In times of trouble: networks and friendships
5. On an educational note: the writer as grammatikos
6. Life, love and the past: self-quotation and recycling
7. Occasional writing as a creative craft.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literary studies: general [DSB], Prose: non-fiction [DN]