Books in the Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies series

This text looks at the Byzantine era in history, not from the Western perception but from an Eastern approach. It looks at how history is portrayed in the East, and at different countries of the East and their affinity with, and contribution to, the Byzantium period.

"Papers from the Forty-Eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Milton Keynes, 28th-30th March 2015" -- T.p.

The eastern frontier of Byzantium and the interaction of the peoples that lived along it are the themes of this book. With a focus on the ninth to thirteenth centuries and dealing with both art history and history, the essays provide reconsiderations of Byzantine policy on its eastern borders, new interpretations and new materials on Byzantine relations with the Georgians, Armenians and Seljuqs, as well as studies on the writing of history among these peoples. Presenting research from Russia and Georgia as well as Europe and the USA, the contributors stress the interaction and interdependence of all the peoples along this frontier zone, and consider the different ways in which the political and cultural power of Byzantium was appropriated. They provide important comparative evidence for the relationship between local and Byzantine cultures, and open up new avenues for research into the history of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. The volume arises from the thirty-third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies held at the University of Warwick in March 1999.

The volume fills a need in the field and the market, and also brings new and cutting edge approaches to the study of the Byzantine emperor.

Although perceived since the sixteenth century as the most impressive literary achievement of Byzantine culture, historical writing nevertheless remains little studied as literature. Historical texts are still read first and foremost for nuggets of information, as main sources for the reconstruction of the events of Byzantine history. Whatever can be called literary in these works has been considered as external and detachable from the facts. The ''classical tradition'' inherited by Byzantine writers, the features that Byzantine authors imitated and absorbed, are regarded as standing in the way of understanding the true meaning of the text and, furthermore, of contaminating the reliability of the history. Chronicles, whose language and style are anything but classicizing, have been held in low esteem, for they are seen as providing a mere chronological exposition of events. This book presents a set of articles by an international cast of contributors, deriving from papers delivered at the 40th annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. They are concerned with historical and visual narratives that date from the sixth to the fourteenth century, and aim to show that literary analyses and the study of pictorial devices, far from being tangential to the study of historical texts, are preliminary to their further study, exposing the deeper structures and purposes of these texts.

The 43rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies in 2010 drew together historians, art historians, and scholars of literature, religion and philosophy, who discussed shared and discipline-specific approaches to the theme of subversion.

The essays collected in this book were delivered at the XLII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in London in 2009 to accompany the exhibition Byzantium 330-1453, at the Royal Academy. The exhibition was one of the most ambitious and complex exhibitions ever mounted at the Royal Academy, as well as one of the most popular.

The papers in this collection, drawn from those presented at the XXXII Spring Symposium of the Society for Byzantine Studies, continue the debate about the idea of the "Byzantine outsider". The scholars present differing approaches to various aspects of the problem.

Aims to bring together a group of scholars to consider the rituals of eating together in the Byzantine world, the material culture of Byzantine food and wine consumption, and the transport and exchange of agricultural products. This title teaches how Byzantines viewed their diet, and how others - including, surprisingly, the Chinese - viewed it.

These papers explore various aspects of travel in the Byzantine period. They range from an interest in individual travellers to studies covering the technical aspects of travel, especially by sea. The conclusion is that travel at this time was enjoyable only after the event.

This collection of conference papers embodies the results of research into the archives of Mount Athos. All aspects of Byzantine monasticism are covered, dealing with questions of asceticism, authority, community, economy, enlightenment, fortification, liturgy, music and spirituality.

Desire, sex, love and the erotic appear incongruous in a Byzantine context. These papers examine the social and religious aspects of Byzantine society with regard to restraint and the lack of it amongst the people of Byzantium.

This volume presents a study of Byzantium in the 9th century. It explores Byzantine culture, art and religion, its relationship with Baghdad and the world of Islam, and examines the idea of Byzantium's "cultural suicide".

This text explores the ways in which rhetoric functioned in Byzantine society - as a tool for the effective communication of ideas and ideologies, but at times also a barrier that inhibited the expression of real feelings and everyday realities, and imposed a burden of decoding on outsiders.

Examines questions relating to the extent and nature of Byzantine trade from Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages. This title includes papers of the 38th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in 2004 at Oxford under the auspices of the Committee for Byzantine Studies.

Presents the articles that are concerned with historical and visual narratives which date from the 6th to the 14th century, and show that literary analyses and the study of pictorial devices are preliminary to their further study, exposing the deeper structures and purposes of these texts.

From the reception of imperial ekphraseis in Hagia Sophia to the sounds and smells of the back streets of Constantinople, the sensory perception of Byzantium is an area that lends itself perfectly to an investigation into the experience of the Byzantine world.

9th-century Byzantium has always been viewed as a mid-point between Iconoclasm and the so-called Macedonian revival; in scholarly terms it is often treated as a ¿dead¿ century. The object of these papers is to question such an assumption. They present a picture of political and military developments, legal and literary innovations, artisanal production, and religious and liturgical changes from the Anatolian plateau to the Greek-speaking areas of Italy that are only now gradually emerging as distinct. Investigation of how the 9th-century Byzantine world was perceived by outsiders also reveals much about Byzantine success and failure in promoting particular views of itself. The chapters here, by an international group of scholars, embody current research in this field; they recover many lost aspects of 9th-century Byzantium and shed new light on the Mediterranean world in a transitional century. The papers in this volume derive from the 30th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies at the University of Birmingham in March 1996.

The papers in this volume derive from the 29th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies. Papers deal, amongst other topics, with the collecting of objects representative of Byzantine culture and with the changing appreciation of Byzantine manuscripts. They also include a series of case studies.