Rewriting

The chapter surveys all the forms of rewriting in Byzantine literature: copying longer or shorter extracts from an “original” work; drawing on a previous text and adapting it into a new one; providing a new version by reworking an older text in terms of its language, style, and length; and parodying and modifying its literary character. Allegory, periphrasis, epitome, paraphrasis, and metaphrasis denoted different modes by which a given text could be rhetorically elaborated; yet, as terms, they were not used consistently by Byzantine authors. As a literary trend, rewriting had its representatives in the fourth and fifth centuries, but burgeoned in the ninth and tenth centuries, and then again in the Komnenian and Palaiologan eras, when it was characterized by literary experimentation. Compositions deriving from (an) older text(s) were treated with respect in Byzantium, as they were seen as creations that required special literary skills.