The ambition of Michael Psellos on Literature and Art is to illustrate an important chapter in the history of Greek literary and art criticism and introduce precisely this aspect of Psellian writing to a wider public.
This chronicle of the Byzantine Empire, beginning in 1025, shows a profound understanding of the power politics that characterized the empire and led to its decline.
Psellos and the Patriarchs: Letters and Funeral Orations for Keroullarios, Leichoudes, and Xiphilinos contains translations of the funeral orations written by Michael Psellos, the leading Byzantine intellectual of the eleventh century, for the three ecumenical patriarchs of Constantinople whom he knew best: Michael Keroullarios (1043-1058), Konstantinos Leichoudes (1059-1063), and Ioannes Xiphilinos (1064-1075). The orations are significant sources for the lives and reputations of these patriarchs; they are also a prime source for the educational reforms made by the emperor Konstantinos IX Monomachos in the mid-1040s, and for many events of that turbulent century that Psellos witnessed, including popular uprisings, plots, civil wars, and the battle with the Catholic legates in 1054. Never before translated into English, the orations and letters are introduced by a detailed analysis of Psellos' historical relationships with the patriarchs and an interpretation of the works. The orations are not only important historical sources: they are crucial specimens of Byzantine rhetoric in a period of transition, as well as being key texts in the corpus of Psellos himself. Psellos used them to score important points in support of his own philosophical agenda and to make broader claims about ethics and metaphysics and the role of learning in political and ecclesiastical life. The orations are here accompanied by translations of a long letter that Psellos wrote to Keroullarios and a pair of letters to Xiphilinos, in which he defended key aspects of his philosophical project.
Michael Psellos has long been known as a key figure in the history of Byzantine literary and intellectual culture, but his theoretical and critical reflections on literature and art are little known outside of a small circle of specialists. Most famous for his Chronographia, a history of eleventh-century Byzantine emperors and their reigns, Psellos also excelled in describing as well as prescribing practices and rules for literary discourse and visual culture. The ambition of Michael Psellos on Literature and Art is to illustrate an important chapter in the history of Greek literary and art criticism and introduce precisely this aspect of Psellian writing to a wider public. The editors of this volume present thirty Psellian texts, all of which have been translated - some in part, most in their entirety - into English. In the majority of cases, the works are translated for the first time in any modern language, and several are discussed at length here for the first time. They are grouped into two separate sections, which roughly translate to two areas of theoretical reflection associated with the modern terms 'literature' and 'art.'0.
Michael Psellus (1018 - 1178 C.E) forms the bridge between the ancient classical view of the daemon as a beneficial guiding spiritual presence (a link between man and the gods) and the later Christian view of demons as intrinsically evil. His writing helps to explain both of these aspects, and the evolution from one to the other. Psellus was a noted author and philosopher of the Byzantine era in the Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire centred on modern Istanbul. Up until the arrival of the Arabs in the 7th century, the Byzantine empire was one of the strongest economies of Europe, being at the western end of the silk road from China. Psellus was a very practical man, being an illustrious political advisor to a succession of emperors, but was also interested in angels and demons. He was the driving force behind the university curriculum reform designed to emphasise the Greek classics, especially Homeric literature rather than just Christian theology. He was also adept at astronomy, medicine, music, theology, jurisprudence, physics, grammar and history. This work, 'Dialogue on the Operation of Daemons, ' has been repeatedly cited in serious and academic literature and offers an interesting look at the Orthodox Christian conceptions of the roles of daemons and devils. His dialogue between Timothy and Thracian explores this line of thought in a truly Platonic form.
The two volumes offer the first critical edition of the entire letter-collection of Michael Psellos; a total of 563 texts, including spuria, rewritings, and excerpts. Psellos (11th c., Constantinople) is a well-known figure among students of Byzantine culture and arguably the most prolific and influential middle Byzantine learned author. His letter-collection, preserved in 53 Byzantine and post-Byzantine manuscripts, grants us glimpses into the lives of well-known but also everyday Byzantines, sheding light upon Constantinopolitan networks of friendship and power and, more importantly, upon habits of rhetorical craftsmanship, literary imagination, and typologies of self.
This is the first critical edition of the 520 letters of Michael Psellos, based on approximately 40 medieval Greek manuscripts. Psellos (11th c., Constantinople) is a well-known figure among students of Byzantine culture. A recent survey recorded 1176 Psellian texts, approximately 1790 medieval and early modern manuscripts with one or more of these texts, and ca. 1300 bibliographical items, from 1497 to the year 2000. Psellos also figures in modern non-academic writing: in Renaissance novels, in Seferis, Auden, and others. Psellos is thus arguably among the most prolific and popular medieval Greek authors. The appeal is no accident. Psellos wrote about nearly every subject and in just about every Byzantine genre. His philosophical texts and lectures are invaluable sources of Byzantine knowledge. The rhetorical writings, such as speeches, histories, and, most importantly, the letters edited here offer us glimpses into the lives of well-known but also everyday Byzantines. Psellos' letter-collection is, after all, one of the finest specimens of this popular Byzantine genre. It sheds light to networks of Constantinopolitan ruling elite, and, most importantly, habits of literary imagination as well as typologies of self.
Michael Psellos (geboren 1018) war einer der gröÃten Polyhistoren in Byzanz. Er erwarb sich Kenntnisse auf allen Wissensgebieten seiner Zeit. Mit Band II der Theologica liegt in der "Bibliotheca Teubneriana " seine literarische Produktion zu theologischen Fragen geschlossen vor.
The ambition of Michael Psellos on Literature and Art is to illustrate an important chapter in the history of Greek literary and art criticism and introduce precisely this aspect of Psellian writing to a wider public.
This is the first edition of ten Funeral Orations of Michael Psellos based on all the manuscripts preserving those works and accompanied by a full apparatus fontium and the necessary critical apparatus. Some of those texts had been published by the Greek scholar Konstantinos Sathas at the end of the XIX c. Those editions hardly correspond to the contemporary standards. The same applies to several more recent editions, prepared by P. Gautier, which also leave much to be desired. The most important texts of our collection are the funeral orations for the patriarchs Michael Keroullarios, Konstantinos Leichoudes and John Xiphilinos, a personal friend of Michael Psellos. All the texts offer valuable details concerning Psellos’s early life; at the same time they constitute an important testimony to the survival of the Late Antique Rhetoric in XI c. Byzantium. They constitute a necessary supplement to Psellos’s more famous work, his Chronography, verifying and shedding a new light on the events narrated there.
The Funeral Orations of Michael Psellos were scatteredthroughout old editions or inaccessible periodicals. Moreover, most of the editions were inadequate, full of misreadings and other mistakes, which rendered some passages of the texts almost unintelligible. This new edition brings together half of these funeral orations. It is based on all the manuscripts preserving these texts andincludes an apparatus fontium and a critical apparatus.
A fascinating exploration of the history of memory and human civilization Memory makes us human. No other animal carries in its brain so many memories of such complexity nor so regularly revisits those memories for happiness, safety, and the accomplishment of complex tasks. Human civilization continues because we are able to pass along memories from one person to another, from one generation to the next. The Guardian of All Things is a sweeping scientific history that takes us on a 10,000-year-old journey replete with incredible ideas, inventions, and transformations. From cave drawings to oral histories to libraries to the internet, The Guardian of All Things is the history of how humans have relentlessly pursued new ways to preserve and manage memory, both within the human brain and as a series of inventions external to it. Michael S. Malone looks at the story of memory, both human and mechanical, and the historic turning points in that story that have not only changed our relationship to memory, but have also changed our human fabric. Full of anecdotes, history, and advances of civilization and technology, The Guardian of All Things is a lively, epic journey along a trajectory of history no other book has ever described, one that will appeal to the curious as well as the specialist.
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