For centuries we have underestimated Byzantium, caricaturing and dismissing its vast, diverse literary output precisely because we had only a dim understanding of how that culture actually operated. We are ‘beyond Byzantium’ in the sense of ‘after’ Byzantium; we are finally picking up the proper scent, so as to track it down at last. Byzantium, in effect, has had to wait for us to catch up, and it is only now that its lively culture of performance and its complex system of emotions have come into view. In particular, it has taken the development of numerous contemporary cultural theories and scientific advances in order for us to more fully appreciate the depth and accomplishment of the eastern empire. Recent years have seen considerable interest in both Byzantine emotions and performance, but seldom in the connections between them, despite the example of Aristotle’s pity and fear. The study of emotions has been transformed by advances in neuroscience which allow us to think in terms of collective emotion and distributed cognition as well as of the more familiar concepts of emotional communities and emotionology. Meanwhile Performance Studies has applied cognitive theory to the emotional implications of moving in synchrony, to entrainment and empathy in performance, and to the emotional environment of Greek drama. This work is applicable to Byzantium as we cease to argue for or against a Byzantine theatre and look instead at the performative society which was Byzantium. This thematic session explores interconnections between performance and emotion: ritual, in a monastery at prayer; rhetorical, in the emotional impact of refutation; narrative, in tracking the emotions of gratitude and wonder; in scholia and homilies to show performance possibilities and associated emotions. It may also be of relevance to debates in the world ‘beyond Byzantium’.
Gratitude is a central motif in Byzantine miracle stories, where each miracle elicits an ethical response: the gift of a miracle must be acknowledged and, in some sense, repaid. Saints frequently chastise, and at times even punish, beneficiaries who fail to perform their thankfulness. Gratitude in these narratives is a complex emotional and ethical response,…
This paper traces the emotion of wonder in Byzantine hagiography. Although miracles are ubiquitous in this genre, they have received little sustained scholarly attention. Insofar as they have been studied as literary constructions, the focus has been on the saint as miracle-worker and on the narrative structure of miracle collections. This paper shifts our attention…
Rhetorical texts, in manuscript form, were meant to be re-delivered with as high a degree of fidelity to the original as possible. In the pre-Gutenberg world, the text merely set the stage; it represented the living presence of the living word. Beyond the words and punctuation on the page, however, is the question of vocal…
In their catechetical lectures and spiritual teaching, Theodore the Stoudite, Symeon the Stoudite, Symeon the New Theologian, and Niketas Stethatos directed monks to perform their prayers, both common and private, with emotional intensity. They offered notes regarding appropriate affects such as grief and joy. They encouraged a variety of interior dispositions, including compunction, introspection, gratitude,…
In Plato’s dialogues, elenchos works as a refutative practice that generates dialectical shame, exposing contradictions between an interlocutor’s stated beliefs and what emerges through Socratic questioning. This productive shame, which is an internal spur toward truth and moral realignment, offers a useful lens for reading hagiographic and martyrological narratives, where refutation likewise produces shame that…