Classical Reception Studies (380-0-1)

Topic

The Image of Byzantium Through the Ages & Cultures

Instructors

Sergey A. Ivanov
Office Hours: Thursday, 5-6 PM (Winter 2027)

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 212: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

During its long history, Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire) 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. All text will be given in English translations.

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.
Throughout the course, our central question will be how—and why—different societies have imagined Byzantium, and what these changing images can tell us about the societies that created them.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Humanities and Fine Arts Distro