International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Foteini Spingou 
University of Toronto, Toronto ON, Canada; 
[e-mail]
Cultural Memory, Literary Canon(s) and Poetic Anthologies 
in Later Byzantium
This paper offers an overview of my current research on poetic anthologies originating from 
Constantinople and dating from 
c.
1200 to 
c.
1350. It explores the relation between composing 
occasional poetry, collecting similar poetry from a recent past and remembering a recent past in 
the Byzantine capital shortly after 1261. It argues that the memory of Byzantium (and its literature) 
is constructed through a chain of circumstantially and accidentally available material and it opens 
up the discussion on the implications of this argument for publishing and interpreting Byzantine 
poetry in the 21
st
century. 
Occasional poetry is a surprising kind of poetry to survive, as it was written to serve a specific 
occasion as a performance or inscription, and not to become a monument in eternity. Komnenian 
poetry has survived mainly in anthologies, all of which date from between ca. 1200 to 
c.
1350. These 
anthologies are divided into two groups: the first group encompasses those with unattributed poetry, 
and the second group includes anthologies built around the poetic work of an early fourteenth-
century poet, Manuel Philes. Finding patterns in the poetry transmitted in manuscripts and the re-
use of motifs from the transmitted poems allows me to argue that their compilation mirrors implicit 
literary canons. I will further suggest that literary canons are built around linguistic and poetic 
features of such texts, and they are signaled in the manuscripts with the names of the most prominent 
authors in the Constantinopolitan cultural environment. I will draw on evidence from manuscripts 
of historiographical and visual culture, in order to argue that the collection of Komnenian poetry 
in the early Palaeologan Constantinople was a conscious effort on behalf of the 
pepaideumenoi 
and 
higher aristocratic echelons to relate with the pre-1204 culture and present themselves as part of 
an undisturbed tradition. Finally, I will relate the compilation of the anthologies to the concept of 
cultural memory as pioneered by Jan and Aleida Assmann and I will address questions related to the 
aims of anthologies, the identity of the compilers and the importance of authorship.
This paper presents innovative research in the compilation of anthologies by analysing and 
correlating manuscripts’ contents and their codicological features. It further emphasizes cultural 
developments in Constantinople of the fourteenth century and argues for a cultural change. Sampling 
results from my research on the relevant manuscripts, I aim to put in discussion my methodological 
concerns about studying these literary products and their means of survival.

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