Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 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 Thaʿlabi’s Lives of the Prophets Ghazzal Dabiri 13 A Scene Played Out Again: Ardashir and Constantine, Sargon and Cyrus Matthew O’Farrell Index
