Motifs, Influences, and Narrative Strategies in the Epics of the Medieval East and West, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, September 17–18, 2020
The impetus to organize this workshop is the research project A Narratological Commentary on Digenis Akritis, currently ongoing at Masaryk University in Brno and funded by the Czech Science Foundation. The aim of the project is to prepare a book-length commentary discussing the treatment of narrative categories, narrative strategies, literary and oral techniques, motifs, parallels, and influences and also including a summary of historical and philological discussions concerning the poem. Our ambition is to make this literary work accessible and understandable to a wider audience from different fields.
Within the planned workshop, we aim to bring together scholars working on the Digenis poem and related Byzantine genres (in particular vernacular poetry and novels) with specialists in both western and eastern medieval epics. We would like to invite you to discuss the character of these narratives and common problems and challenges for literary historians dealing with medieval epics.
Topics for discussion include but are not restricted to:
- motivic parallels in epics across medieval Europe and the Near East
- the mixing of cultures in border epics
- medieval epics and other genres (influences, interaction)
- epical and other narrative strategies
- medieval epics and narratology
- orality and textuality