Reading the Late Byzantine Romance
A Handbook

The corpus of Palaiologan romances consists of about a dozen works of imaginative fiction from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries which narrate the trials and tribulations of aristocratic young lovers. This volume brings together leading scholars of Byzantine literature to examine the corpus afresh and aims to be the definitive work on the subject, suitable for scholars and students of all levels. It offers interdisciplinary and transnational approaches which demonstrate the aesthetic and cultural value of these works in their own right and their centrality to the medieval and early modern Greek, European and Mediterranean literary traditions. From a historical perspective, the volume also emphasizes how the romances represent a turning point in the history of Greek letters: they are a repository of both ancient and medieval oral poetic and novelistic traditions and yet are often considered the earliest works of Modern Greek literature.

1. An introduction to the Palaiologan romance: narrating the vernacular Adam J. Goldwin and Ingela Nilsson; 2. The categories of 'originals' and 'adaptations' in late Byzantine romance: a reassessment Kostas Yiavis; 3. Intercultural encounters in the late Byzantine vernacular romance Carolina Cupane; 4. Dreams and female initiation in Livistros and Rhodamne and Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Efthymia Priki; 5. The acculturation of the French romance Pierre De Provence et La Belle Maguelonne in the Byzantine Imperios and Margarona Romina Luzi; 6. Chronotopes between East and West in Apollonios of Tyre Francesca Rizzo Nervo; 7. Linguistic contacts in the late Byzantine romances: where cultural influence meets language interference Theodore Markopoulos; 8. From Herakles to Erkoulios, or the place of the war of Troy in the late Byzantine romance movement Elizabeth Jeffreys; 9. Troy in Byzantine romances: Homeric reception in Digenis Akritis, the Tale of Achilles and the Tale of Troy Adam J. Goldwyn and Ingela Nilsson; 10. Herodotean material in a late version of the Alexander romance Corinne Jouanno; 11. The Palaiologan hagiographies: saints without romance Charis Messis; 12. Homosocial desire in the War of Troy: between (wo)men Stavroula Constantinou; 13. Literary landscapes in the Palaiologan romances: an ecocritical approach Kirsty Stewart; 14. The affective community of romance: love, privilege and the erotics of death in the Mediterranean Megan Moore; 15. The bookseller's parrot: a fictional afterword Panagiotis A. Agapitos.

Adam J. Goldwyn is an Assistant Professor of English at North Dakota State University, where he specializes in Byzantine literature, Mediterranean Studies and Classical reception. He is the author of Byzantine Ecocriticism: Women, Nature, and Power in the Medieval Greek Romance (2017).
Ingela Nilsson is Professor of Greek and Byzantine Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests concern all forms of narration and literary adaptation, and the tension that such procedures create between tradition and innovation. Such perspectives are at the centre of her recent monograph Raconter Byzance: La Littérature Au XIIe Siècle (2014).