Classical Reception Studies: the Ancient Greco-Roman world in posterity (380-0-2)
Topic
The Image of Byzantium Through the Ages & Cultures
Instructors
Sergey A. Ivanov
Meeting Info
University Library 4670: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
During its long history, Byzantium interacted with different foreign civilizations which created their own images of it. Needless to say, those images differ among themselves to the same extent as those civilizations differ from each other. Not that these images are completely unrelated to the ‘reality', but they reflect it fancifully, which lends an opportunity to think about mechanisms of image-creation.
In this course we will study, in chronological order, what was written about Byzantium from the 5th until the 15th century, by Germanic kings and Armenian scholars; by Arabic enemies and Bulgarian disciples; by Georgian monks and Scandinavian mercenaries; Rus' pilgrims and Italian merchants; Roman popes and Spanish diplomats; Jewish travelers and Catholic Crusaders; French novelists and Muscovite princes.
In the mid-15th century, the millennium-old Byzantine empire finally collapsed. Its image, however, not only survived but acquired new facets, disentangled from mundane credibility. It was used or rather misused and abused by the European enlighteners, philosophers, politicians, but most actively by the Russian authorities, from the eighteenth-century Empress Catherine the Great to today's President Vladimir Putin. We will look how Byzantium was depicted in literature, from Russia's greatest poet Alexander Pushkin to contemporary Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco. We will analyze literary, political and mass media texts as well as movies (for instance, the Turkish 2012 film, Fetih) and architecture, including American ones: St. Louis Cathedral in St. Louis, Lakewood Memorial Church in Minneapolis, National Shrine of Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C., etc. Finally, we will deal with the most recent events: the Turkish President Recep Erdogan's decision to reconvert Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul from a museum to a mosque—and the Moscow ideologues' reconceptualization of the annexed Crimea.
Class Materials (Required)
Required textbook(s): N/A
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Distro Area
Interdisciplinary Distro-rules apply
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area