From Homer to Digenis Akritis: Epics on the Byzantine Frontier, Seminar with Elizabeth M. Jeffreys (University of Oxford), Classical Association of Scotland (Edinburgh and South-East Centre) via Zoom, November 25, 2020, 6:00 pm GMT

That important manuscripts of classical Greek were copied in the monasteries of South Italy is well known; much less appreciated by Byzantinists (and classicists?) is that text in vernacular Greek were also known in this environment. Digenis Akritis, Byzantium's only epic, has a complex transmission history with a key version, now housed in the Grottaferrata monastery, produced in South Italy c. 1300: this paper will explore what the implications might be.

Elizabeth M. Jeffreys is Emeritus Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, and Fellow Emerita of Exeter College, Oxford.

Co-sponsored with the PAIXUE project.

Advance registration required.