bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
An early Byzantine inscribed amulet and its narratives
Authors: Tuerk Jacquelyn 
Published: January 2014

AbstractHow did an early Byzantine hematite amulet address physical illness? Contemporary medical texts explain that the stone itself was believed to cure bleeding, but how can we account for its engraved words and images depicting Christ healing the bleeding woman? The biblical narrative offers a persuasive analogy to the personal narrative of the Byzantine woman’s own sickness, positing the possibility of a cure for the Byzantine woman through identity with the biblical woman. It provides a model for the infirm Byzantine woman to understand her own personal narrative, and a model of the desired ending to the Byzantine woman’s narrative.
‘This is not a political book’: Bitter Lemons as British propaganda
Authors: Russel David 
Published: January 2014

‘This is not a political book, but simply a somewhat impressionistic study of moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years 1953-6.’ (11)The first sentence of Bitter Lemons, Lawrence Durrell’s book about Cyprus, has always intrigued me for the multi-layered contradictions that it contains. There is the internal contradiction within the sentence itself — how can a work which claims to be a ‘study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years of 1953-6’ not be a ‘political book’? Don’t we immediately think of political troubles when we read ‘the troubled years 1953-6,’ after all, what else makes those years troubled? There is the contradiction between the first sentence and the rest of the book, for a major part of Bitter Lemons, indeed the final third, directly addresses the political situation on Cyprus.
Zeno, the epileptic emperor: historiography and polemics as sources of realia
Authors: Conrad Lawrence I. 
Published: January 2014

AbstractSeveral Byzantine sources describe the emperor Zeno as suffering from epilepsy, which, although assigned to natural causes in Greek humoral medicine, was more widely explained in terms of demonic possession. The charge of epilepsy originated with the north Syrian historian Eustathius and comprised an extremist Chalcedonian attempt to discredit the ruler, probably for promulgation of the Henoticon in 482. It is ignored or contradicted by other Chalcedonian writers and by all Monophysite sources. The origins and growth of the legend affirm once again the great influence of confessional discord on historical perceptions; they also illustrate how a single author’s baseless polemic can eventually assume the form of an apparently secure and widely attested affirmation of simple fact, and highlight the crucial role of north Syria in producing the literature upon which modern scholarship on late antiquity must rely.
Ignatios the Deacon — cleric of the Constantinopolitan patriarchate, metropolitan bishop of Nicaea, private scholar, teacher and writer (a Life reconsidered)
Authors: Pratsch Thomas 
Published: January 2014

AbstractIgnatios, though well known as an author, has remained a mysterious figure in Byzantine history whose details of life have only sporadically emerged from the ‘Dark Age’. On the basis of recent prosopographical research, the article tries to slightly rearrange the pieces of information and arrives at the following career of Ignatios: born 785-790, disciple at the patriarchal school, member of the patriarchal clergy, kept his post in 815, skeuophylax of the Hagia Sophia, metropolitan bishop of Nicaea, deposed in 843, repentant cleric, writer, teacher and private scholar with still considerable influence, died in 847 or shortly after. This reconstruction may not solve the problem beyond any reasonable doubt, but it prepares the ground for further investigation.
What do they think about children? Perceptions of childhood in early Byzantine literature
Authors: Kalogeras Nikos 
Published: January 2014

AbstractHow understanding, caring, and loving were the Byzantines towards their children? Was childhood in Byzantium an autonomous period of life or just a passage to the world of adults? The answer is not simple. Texts from the Apocryphal Gospels as well as from hagiographical narrative reveal that Byzantine writers distinguished children into good and bad, those ‘worthy of God’s grace’ and those who demonstrated ‘evil’ qualities. The level of children’s proximity to the code of adult behaviour determined the views of adults towards their descendants accordingly, and defined children’s relations to other social groups.
The presence of Sikelianos in the poetry of George Seferis
Authors: Psoni Anastasia 
Published: January 2014

AbstractEchoes of Sikelianos’ poetry can be detected in many poets, but his presence in Seferis is particularly interesting in the light of the close personal relationship which developed between the two poets from the 1940s. The poetic dialogue starts with Seferis’ Στροφή (1931) and develops continuously until his last book of poems, Τρία Κρυφά Ποιήματα (1966). Seferis, attracted by Sikelianos’ linguistic richness, recreates the older poet’s words ingeniously in his search for a new poetics. I examine this dialogue chronologically to show that exploring the presence of Sikelianos in Seferis’ poetry enhances the understanding of the younger poet and reveals that, however great the differences in matters of technique between the two poets, their attitudes to poetry and poetics are in the end closely related.
The Trouble with the Trinity: The context of a slogan during the reign of Constantine IV (668-85)
Authors: Turner† David 
Published: January 2014

AbstractThis article explains the context of the slogan aired by troopers of the Anatolikon in the presence of Constantine IV (668-85): ‘[if we] believe in a trinity, [let us] crown [all] three’. The number ‘three’ was of symbolical significance for the Anatoliks, reflecting the Holy Trinity (the antithesis of Islam), the original number of themes, and the usual number of co-emperors in the Heraklid dynasty. The ‘collegiate’ rationale of the themata conflicted with the rejuvenated imperial ideology of the emperor, who may have tried to dilute the power of the themata in 681, after the sixth ecumenical council had triumphantly defeated monothelitism and re-established the authority of a single emperor, on the pattern of Justinian the Great. At that point in time, the co-emperors were deposed and mutilated.
A post-modern lesson in history: the incomplete rhetoric of Thanasis Valtinos’s The Descent of the Nine
Authors: Païvanas Dimitris 
Published: January 2014

‘A myth, that is, a fabulous narrative, may be necessary when no logical form of explanation will work, but the illogical premises will remain embedded in the story.’ [Miller 1990: 72].The interpretation of Thanasis Valtinos’s The Descent of the Nine as a narrative signifying the defeat of the Greek Left in 1948–9 is limited and historically specific to post-1974 populism in Greece. This article challenges the interpretation of the text as a ‘grand narrative’ for the Greek Left. The novella’s inclination towards figuration reveals a more complex individualistic and potentially allegorical view of the narrated events. This figural contamination of the text’s literal meaning results in irreconcilable ambiguity, a hitherto neglected formal feature relating to its theme of ‘failure’. This, in conjunction with the text’s broader resistance to metaphorical synthesis, makes the novella a strong candidate for its inclusion in the canon of Greek post-modernist fiction.