16 - Byzantine readers

Summary

After an interval of some eight centuries, the genre of the novel was resurrected in twelfth-century Byzantium by four writers: Theodore Prodromos, Niketas Eugenianos, Eustathios Makrembolites and Constantine Manasses. They modelled their four novels after the novels of the second sophistic period, particularly those of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. Points of similarity include plot elements, characterisations and stylistics, as well as lavish use of allusion and rhetorical display. Like the novels of the second sophistic, the Byzantine novels were written in Atticising Greek and addressed principally a learned audience. In an intensely Christian world, these new novels also resurrected the ancient novels' pagan gods and rituals. Yet in reviving the novel, these writers were also striving to create something different and new. Evidence from such varied sources as collections of sayings, poems and critical writings shows a continued readership of the ancient novel during the mediaeval Greek period. The best evidence of a sophisticated and attentive readership of the ancient novels is found in the twelfth-century revivalist novels. Many factors can be associated with the genre's revival. With the rise of Christianity the appeal of the novel had transferred to other types of narrative, for example, to apocryphal stories and saints' lives, with their novelistic themes of chastity, trials, separations, reunions and salvation in the end.