Narrative, Imagination and Concepts of Fiction in Late Antique Hagiography

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-68507-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 478, 322 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 237 mm, Gewicht: 614 g

Reihe: Mnemosyne, Supplements / Mnemosyne, Supplements, Late Antique Literature

This volume explores concepts of fiction in late antique hagiographical narrative in different cultural and literary traditions. It includes Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Persian and Arabic material. Whereas scholarship in these texts has traditionally focussed on historical questions, this book approaches imaginative narrative as an inherent element of the genre of hagiography that deserves to be studied in its own right. The chapters explore narrative complexities related to fiction, such as invention, authentication, intertextuality, imagination and fictionality. Together, they represent an innovative exploration of how these concepts relate to hagiographical discourses of truth and the religious notion of belief, while paying due attention to the various factors and contexts that impact readers’ responses.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Van Pelt, Julie

De,Temmerman, Koen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Kirchengeschichte Hagiographie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Note on Editorial Choices and Abbreviations

Part 1 Concepts and Contexts

1 Narratives of Imagination and Fiction in Late Antique Hagiography: Scholarship and Ways Forward

Koen De Temmerman and Julie Van Pelt

2 The Cultural Politics of Imagination

On Fictionality in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Christian Contexts (Origen, the Apocryphal Acts, Hagiography)

Panagiotis Roilos

3 From Cyclops to Unicorn: Fiction and the New Communitas of Middle Byzantine Hagiography

Christian Høgel

Part 2 Reality and Representation

4 The Fictionality of Literary History in Syriac: Thomas of Marga and Abdisho Bar Brikha

Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

5 At the Margins of the World

The Desert as a Fictionalized Space in Pseudo-Neilos’ Narrations and the History of the Great Deeds of Bishop Paul of Qentos and Priest John of Edessa

André Binggeli

6 The Literary Construction of a Post-Iconoclast Saint: Gregorios Dekapolites between Biography and Fictionalization

Oscar Prieto Domínguez

Part 3 Invention and Truth

7 Thinking Characters: Fictionalization and Claims of Truth in Syriac Hagiography

Flavia Ruani

8 Focalization, Immersion and Fictionality: Shifts between Female and Male Pronouns in Greek Lives of Cross-Dressers

Julie Van Pelt

9 Truth, Authentication and History-Writing in the History of the Armenians by Agathangelos

Valentina Calzolari

Part 4 Models and Intertexts

10 Malchus, the Not So Good Shepherd: Biblical Stylization, Generic and Moral Ambiguity in Jerome’s Vita Malchi

Danny Praet

11 Ritual Fictions, Liturgical Truths in the Hymns of Romanos the Melodist

Derek Krueger

12 Modelling Prophets: Alexander the Great as a Proto-Sufi Saint-King in Tha?labi’s Lives of the Prophets

Ghazzal Dabiri

13 A Scene Played Out Again: Ardashir and Constantine, Sargon and Cyrus

Matthew O’Farrell

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Julie Van Pelt, Ph.D. (2019), Ghent University, is a postdoctoral fellow of the Flemish Research Council (F.W.O.). She has published various articles on Greek hagiography. Her monograph Saints in Disguise. Performance, Illusion and Truth in Early Byzantine Hagiography is forthcoming.

Koen De Temmerman (PhD 2006) is Professor of Classics at Ghent University.