Przemysław Marciniak

The aim of my project is a literary analysis of Byzantine satirical texts written between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries as well as an analysis of the social and cultural role they played in the Byzantine society. Satire was not a very prolific literary genre in Byzantium before the eleventh century from when more satirical texts appeared (with the true satirical revival, especially in Lucian’s manner, in the twelfth century). My project investigates also Lucianic Nachleben in Byzantium. I intend to describe the place of Lucian’s writings in Byzantine literary culture and to understand how, and to what purposes, his texts were used throughout the Byzantine period.

Defining satire in Byzantium is a very difficult task. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium: “[satire] could take many forms, including parody and allegory. Intentionality and not literary form determine what is satire”. It has long been recognised that certain satires are excellent sources of information about Byzantine political and biographical issues and have been studied for the political knowledge displayed by the authors as well as identification of the characters satirised. However, as examples of literature they have been regarded as uninteresting and, in many cases, as simple imitations of Lucian. However, by dismissing the texts as poor imitations of classical literature or only sources of historical facts, the studies have failed to appreciate the literary qualities of the texts, which my project will study. Only recently did some authors start reappraising common, mostly nineteenth century, views on Byzantine satires.

My project will examine the following issues related to Byzantine satires: Byzantine sense of humour, literary construction of satire, Byzantine satirical katabaseis (visits to the Underworld), satire as a game, the socio-cultural functions performed by satires, and the art of invectives in Byzantine texts. Though my main focus will be literature I intend to put satire in a wider context. Therefore historical, cultural and sociological factors will be taken into account. The outcome of my project will be a monograph on Byzantine satire which is intended as a cross-disciplinary study. Such a study will be useful, as I hope, not only for Byzantinists but also classicists, students of the history of laughter, and generally historians of literature.