Alexander Riehle, University of Vienna
Women’s Writing in Byzantium
Course at Masaryk University, Brno
26-27 March 2015
Course description
Compared to medieval Western Europe, the amount of surviving works written by women in
Greek in the middle ages is extremely scanty. Of the list of ca. 1250 Byzantine authors recently
compiled for a dictionary project, only 13, or just over 1 per cent, are women. In this course, we
will inquire into this phenomenon by looking at the general parameters of women’s writing in
Byzantium, including women’s roles in society, female literacy, and the issue of preservation.
Secondly, based on the reading of selected texts authored by women, we will investigate the
poetics of women’s literature by discussing aspects such as genre, structure and style, voice and
identity.
Course outline with mandatory readings
Sessions 1 and 2 (26 March, 15:50-17:20 and 17:45-19:05): General Parameters
Liz James, “The Role of Women,” In The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies, ed. Elizabeth
Jeffreys. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008, pp. 643-51
Maria Mavroudi, “Learned Women of Byzantium and the Surviving Record,” In Byzantine
Religious Culture. Studies in Honor of Alice-Mary Talbot. The Medieval Mediterranean 92, eds.
Denis Sullivan, Elizabeth Fisher and Stratis Papaioannou. Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 53-84
Session 3 (27 March, 9:00-10:20): Kassia, Troparion on the Sinful Woman
Alexander Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature (650–850). Research Series 2. Athens: The
National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, 1999, pp. 315-22
Source: Kassia, Troparion on the Sinful Woman (with Luke 7:36-50, Mark 16:1-8 and Genesis 3:1-8)
Session 4 (27 March, 10:40-12:00): Anna Komnene, Alexiad
Leonora Neville, “Lamentation, History, and Female Authorship in Anna Komnene’s Alexiad.”
Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 53 (2013): 192-218
Source: Anna Komnene, Alexiad, Prologue and Book VI 8