Books in the Publications of the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London series

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.

This volume brings together experts who investigate the links that connect music, language and national identity, focusing on the Greek paradigm. Through the study of the Greek case, the book paves the way for innovative interdisciplinary approaches to the formation of the 'national' in different cultures.

John II Komnenos ruled over the Byzantine Empire from 1118 to 1143. Why has John been neglected by modern historians? What new historical evidence can lead to a reassessment of the achievements his reign? This book presents a chronology of the major events and a series of maps to guide the reader to the rediscovery of this emperor and his reign.

'It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrificed. It is a grand object - the very poetry of politics.¿ So wrote Lord Byron in his journal in February 1821. For a poet whose life and work are interlaced with action of multiple sorts, little attention has been devoted to Byron¿s engagement with issues of politics. This volume examines the implications of reading and writing as themselves political acts; interrogates the politics inherent or implied in Byron¿s poems and plays; and follows the trajectory of his political engagement, from the British House of Lords, via the Peninsular War, to his involvement in revolutionary politics abroad.

While written sources on the history of Greece have been studied extensively, no systematic attempt has been made to examine photography as an important cultural and material process. This is surprising, given that Modern Greece and photography are almost peers: both are cultural products of the 1830s, and both actively converse with modernity. Camera Graeca: Photographs, Narratives, Materialities fills this lacuna. It is the first inter-disciplinary volume to examine critically and in a theorised manner the entanglement of Greece with photography. The book argues that photographs and the photographic process as a whole have been instrumental in the reproduction of national imagination, in the consolidation of the nation-building process, and in the generation and dissemination of state propaganda. At the same time, it is argued that the photographic field constitutes a site of memory and counter-memory, where various social actors intervene actively and stake their discursive, material, and practical claims. As such, the volume will be of relevance to scholars and photographers, worldwide. The book is divided into four, tightly integrated parts. The first, ''Imag(in)ing Greece'', shows that the consolidation of Greek national identity constituted a material-cum-representational process, the projection of an imagery, although some photographic production sits uneasily within the national canon, and may even undermine it. The second part, ''Photographic narratives, alternative histories'', demonstrates the narrative function of photographs in diary-keeping and in photobooks. It also examines the constitution of spectatorship through the combination of text and image, and the role of photography as a process of materializing counter-hegemonic discourses and practices. The third part, ''Photographic matter-realities'', foregrounds the role of photography in materializing state propaganda, national memory, and war. The final part, ''Photographic ethnographiesâ

This book addresses a gap in scholarly literature by bringing together specialists from different disciplinary traditions - history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, literature, ethnomusicology and international relations - so as to examine the complex relationship between the culture and peoples of Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.

Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of Alopece is arguably the most richly and diversely commemorated of all ancient thinkers. This volume gives an introduction surveying the ancient accounts of Socrates, and discussing the origins and the state of the 'Socratic question'. It also covers the Socrates from Late Antiquity to medieval times.

Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of Alopece is arguably the most richly and diversely commemorated of all ancient thinkers. This book gives an Introduction summarizing the reception of Socrates up to 1800, and describing scholarly study since then. It also features the inclusion of Cold War Socrateses, both capitalist and communist.

Presents an account of El Greco's life up to the time he left Crete for Italy in 1567 at the age of twenty-six. This title provides an assessment of earlier research on Crete of the 16th century then goes on to present conclusions on the life of El Greco deriving from the author's reading of Venetian archive material.

Authority is an important concept in Byzantine culture, an invisible force that underpinned the Byzantine state and maintained its existence across so many centuries, binding people from different ethnic groups, in different spheres of life and activities together. Even though its significance to understanding the Byzantine world is so central.

Half a century after the civil war which tore apart Greek society in the 1940s, the essays in this volume look back to examine the crisis. They combine the approaches of political and international history with the latest research into the social, economic, religious, cultural, ideological and literary aspects of the struggle.

Offers a portrait of an extraordinary city as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants and by outsiders, from the time of its foundation in the 4th century BC up to the 20th century. As the capital of a Hellenistic kingdom, then as a major city in the Roman, Byzantine and Arab empires, Alexandria was renowned as an intellectual city.

Brings together a group of international scholars, who explore many unusual aspects of the world of Byzantine women in the period 800-1200. This collection aims to investigate the participation of women - non-imperial women in particular - in supposedly 'masculine' fields of operation.

This collection of commissioned essays aims to present an overview of some of the different tendencies manifested by modern Greek attitudes to Byzantium since the late 18th-century Enlightenment.