Digenis Akritis by Elizabeth Jeffreys

Digenis Akritis by Elizabeth Jeffreys

Digenis Akritis is Byzantium's only epic poem, telling of the exploits of a heroic warrior of 'double descent' on the frontiers between Byzantine and Arab territory in Asia Minor in the ninth and tenth centuries. It survives in six versions, of which the two oldest, dating from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, are presented here in an edited version. The manuscripts are preserved in the Grottaferrata monastery near Rome and the Escorial Library in Spain. Behind these two versions lies a twelfth-century poem that can now be glimpsed at but not reconstructed. This edition and translation aims at highlighting the nature of the lost poem, and at providing a guide through the maze of recent discussions about the epic and its background.

This edition for the first time makes this challenging medieval text fully accessible to medievalists beyond te specialisms of Byzantine or modern Greek studies and will surely remain standard for many years to comeSpeculum

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780521397766
ISBN 10	0521397766
Title	Digenis Akritis
Author	Elizabeth Jeffreys
Series	Cambridge Medieval Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2004-07-08
Number of pages	464
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable