Przemysław Marciniak & Dion C. Smythe (eds.), The Reception of Byzantium in European Culture since 1500, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2016
Studies on the reception of the classical tradition are
an indispensable part of classical studies. Understanding the importance of
ancient civilization means also studying how it was used subsequently. This
kind of approach is still relatively rare in the field of Byzantine Studies.
This volume, which is the result of the range of interests in (mostly)
non-English-speaking research communities, takes an important step to filling
this gap by investigating the place and dimensions of ‘Byzantium after
Byzantium’.
This collection of essays uses the idea of
‘reception-theory’ and expands it to show how European societies after
Byzantium have responded to both the reality, and the idea of Byzantine
Civilisation. The authors discuss various forms of Byzantine influence in the
post-Byzantine world from architecture to literature to music to the place of
Byzantium in modern political debates (e.g. in Russia). The intentional focus
of the present volume is on those aspects of Byzantine reception less
well-known to English-reading audiences, which accounts for the inclusion of
Bulgarian, Czech, Polish and Russian perspectives. As a result this book shows
that although so-called 'Byzantinism' is a pan-European phenomenon, it is made
manifest in local/national versions.
The volume brings together specialists from various
countries, mainly Byzantinists, whose works focus not only on Byzantine Studies
(that is history, literature and culture of the Byzantine Empire), but also on
the influence of Byzantine culture on the world after the Fall of
Constantinople.
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