International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

BYZANTINE LITERATURE IN THE 11
TH
 CENTURY
Chairs: 
Diether Roderich Reinsch, Dejan Dželebdžić
Penelope Buckley
, 
Drama
and 
Pathos
in Psellos’s 
Chronographia
Olena Syrtsova
, 
Deux lettres de l
’
empereur Michel Ducas Parapinace, composé par Michel Psellus : 
la question du destinataire qui aime la paix
Nepheli Mauche
, 
Changer au gré des circonstances : vice ou vertu de Psellos?
Mariella Menchelli
, 
A Patmos Scroll Containing Proclus. Notes on Editorial Skills 
and Proclus’s Reading in the Age of Michael Psellus
Vaclav Ježek
, 
The 
Epitaphios Logos
as a Source for Its Author’s Personal Philosophical Views, 
with Particular Reference to Michael Psellos and Gregory of Nazianzus
Eduardo Pinzon Avendaño, 
Bilinguisme, Savoirs-connectés et transfert culturel à Byzance : le cas de Syméon Seth
Ana-Maria Răducan
, 
Changing His Own Mind. A Theologian and a Philosopher in Byzantium in the Eleventh Century
Anton Anashkin
, 
Towards a Genesis of Byzantine Church Canonical 
Erotapokriseis
by Niketas, 
Metropolitan of Herakleia (XI C.): Epistolary Trace

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Penelope Buckley 
University of Melbourne, Melbourne VIC, Australia; 
[e-mail]
Drama
and 
Pathos
in Psellos’s 
Chronographia
In recent discussions of Psellos’s Chronographia, Lauritzen has proposed a schematic rigidity 
in its approach to the idea of character, while Kaldellis has traced a very different, highly consistent 
sub-text and subversive structure, but both find a marked stability in the work. 
Papaioannou, on the other hand, has uncovered a wonderful metamorphic play and mobility 
in Psellos’s writing, particularly in the Orations but also in the Chronographia. This paper springs 
from Papaioannou’s analysis but looks in a preliminary way at one source of relative stability in the 
Chronographia: Psellos’s use of drama and dramatic framing to control at once the flux of events 
and the labile play of empathy and viewpoint in his sensibility.
One main by-product of his dramatic method in the Chronographia is his use of pathos. Psellos 
is famous for seeing a mix of good and bad in human beings but in this work he so frames or stages 
moments in their lives as to reveal an almost unprecedented pathos, even dignity, in the notably 
unworthy or flawed. In this, as in so much, his writing bridges a distant past and distant future.