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The late-mediaeval Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne is arguably one of the most popular composite romances in European literature. It now survives in over three hundred manuscripts and early books (in Greek, English, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, High German, Italian, Spanish, possibly Armenian and Hebrew). Pierre has a distinct periodic valence, narrating as it does a knightly story. The sixteenth-century Imberios and Margarona is a powerfully revisionist subsequent version. It responds to the new cultural context, and is in line with the needs of new audiences. Imberios belongs to an explosive period of Greek literature, which makes a decisive contribution to the enhancement of vernacular authority. This lecture examines the ways in which this adaptation is able to reconfigure the originary discourse, and evolve a conceptual vocabulary that precipitates the early modern.
Kostas Yiavis (kyiavis@Princeton.EDU) received his Ph.D. in Modern and Mediaeval Languages from the University of Cambridge (2006). He is Lecturer in Modern Greek at Cornell University, and he is the book editor of the Anglo-Hellenic Review. His interests include Greek literature, history and culture from the twelfth century to the present; comparative hermeneutics and philology; the cultural history of radical change; the interaction of literature with seemingly more powerful discourses, such as philosophy, history and theology. His critical edition of the sixteenth-century romance Imberios and Margarona is forthcoming from by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece (MIET). His Recent articles and reviews have appeared in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Hellenika, Bulletin of Judaeo-Greek Studies, Journal of Hellenic Studies, English Historical Review, Classical Review. Yiavis is now working on topoi from Homer to Persian epic to mediaeval Western European poetry, and on a monograph about the first translations of Western literature into vernacular Greek.
Students enrolled in the CLA547/PAW501/HLS501 seminar on “Sparta and the Peloponnese,” taught by Michael A. Flower and Nino Luraghi, travelled to Greece over the fall midterm break. The class trip was funded by the Program in Hellenic Studies, with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund. The students will present their findings based on their fieldwork in the Peloponnese.
Co-sponsored by: Department of Classics and Program in the Ancient World
"In five villages of Northern Greece, fire-walking rituals are performed by the communities of the Anastenaria. This tradition started by Greek populations at the Black Sea coast of Eastern Thrace, an area that was then part of the Ottoman Empire and today belongs to Bulgaria. After the Balkan wars, the Anastenarides came to Greek Macedonia, where they keep performing their rituals until today, while fire-walking is still performed in its original location in Bulgaria by a few people.
The Anastenarides, are Orthodox Christians. However, in addition to the Church rituals, they observe a separate annual ritual cycle, focused on the worship of saints Constantine and Helen. The most important event in this cycle is the festival of the two saints every May, which lasts for three days and includes various processions around the village, an animal sacrifice, music, and ecstatic dancing. The most dramatic moment of the festival is the firewalking ritual itself, where the participants, carrying the icons of the saints, dance over the glowing coals. Firewalking is also performed indoors in January.
The photos are from my ethnographic work in the Greek village of Agia Eleni. Fire-walking is also performed every June at the Spanish village of San Pedro Manrique, as part of the festival of San Juan."