The Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781108423632)

The Excerpta project instigated by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII turned the enormously rich experience offered by Greek historiography into a body of excerpts distributed across fifty-three distinct thematic collections. In this, the first sustained analysis, Andr s N meth moves from viewing the Excerpta only as a collection of textual fragments to focusing on its dependence from and impact on the surrounding Byzantine culture in the tenth century. He introduces the concept of appropriation and also uses it to study some other key texts created under the Excerpta's influence (De thematibus, De administrando imperio and De ceremoniis). Unlike world chronicles, the Excerpta ignored the chronological dimension of history and fostered the biographical turn in Byzantine historiography. By exploring theoretical questions such as classification and retrieval of historical information and the relationship between knowledge and political power, this book provides powerful new ways for exploring the Excerpta in Byzantine studies and beyond.

Author: Andr疽 N駑eth
ISBN-10: 1108423639
ISBN-13: 9781108423632
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/11/2018
Pages: 352
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 5.70h x 9.40w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2019