The Second Constructive Principle of the Byzantine Novel

FERNÁNDEZ, TOMÁS

Londres

Congreso; 15th Congress of the Fédération internationale des associations d'études classiques and the Classical Association annual conference 2019; 2019

This paper has a twofold goal: to postulate that Greek, Byzantine and modern novels have a common compositional principle, which consists in the combination of narrative motifs into scenes, and in the arrangement of these scenes within an overarching structure (I), and to formulate the hypothesis that the specificity of the Byzantine novel might sought after in a second constructive principle: not in the metonymic accumulation of motifs and scenes but in the metaphoric, poetic or spatial elements in (relative) temporal stasis (II). I will exemplify the interaction of principles with Hysmine and Hysminias by Eumathios Makrembolites (12th c.) (II.a) and with Drosilla and Charikles by Niketas Eugenianos (12th c.) (II.b). I will finally argue that both constructive principles use a different kind of basic narrative elements, are subject to different combination rules, and operate at different levels (III).My approach is not so much pre- as para-narratological. While I am inspired by many of the insights of classical and postclassical narratology, I focus on the theoretical framework proposed by Viktor Shklovsky in his Theory of Prose, bringing it into pace with more recent studies.