Books by Roderick Beaton

It has been called the "age of revolution". The white heat of it came in the decades either side of the year 1800. But it lasted a full century: from the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the great national "unifications" of Germany and Italy during the 1860s. Right in the middle of this long "age of revolution" and, as it turns out, the pivotal point within it, comes the Greek Revolution that broke out in the spring of 1821. Historians have been slow to recognise the key role of the Greek uprising in 1821, and the international recognition of Greece as a sovereign, independent state nine years later, in 1830, in this process that did so much to shape the geopolitics of the European continent, and indeed of much of the world. This little book sets out to explain what happened during these nine years to bring about such far-reaching (and surely unanticipated) consequences, and why the full significance of these events is only now coming to be appreciated, two hundred years later.

This work on Byzantine heroic poetry offers material on "Digenes Akrites" and the classical revival in the 12th century; the Grottaferrata version of "Akrites"; Armenians in Byzantine epic poetry; the Akritic hero and its socio-cultural status in the light of comparative data; and more.

Includes papers which explore the relation between literary texts and collective consciousness, scrutinizing the evidence of the texts themselves in their late- or post-Byzantine context, and assessing how their reception both influenced and was influenced by the processes of nation-building in Modern Greece.

An essential introductory account of Greek fiction during the period 1071-1453. The argument is illustrated by lucid plot summaries and extensive quotations (with literal English renderings.) Now revised and expanded with an essay on recent work.

Covering 500 years of history and an area stretching from Corsica to Cyprus and north into the Balkans, this is an exploration of a single cultural tradition of folk poetry and songs composed and handed down by word of mouth by villagers, minstrels and poorer inhabitants of Ottoman and Greek cities.