Memory

Abstract

The chapter surveys the role of memory in Byzantine literature as an intrinsic, constitutive element in the process of literary creation and consumption. It proposes that texts and discourses carried the memory of other texts and discourses, and aimed at the incitement, manipulation, and indeed the creation of such memory among their readers and audiences. This (as the authors term it here) “textual” memory functioned as a code that defined the literary event in Byzantium. Attention is drawn to the techniques of memorization, to the many types of text that collected material from other texts in order serve such techniques, and to the modes of citation as the main way by which textual memory was enacted in Byzantine literature. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Byzantine literary “commonplaces.”