Up to the 1980s anthropologists and historians regarded the transition from orality to literacy largely as a linear, teleological process, and thus established a “Great Divide” (R. Finnegan) between oral and literate societies. While for many cultures and periods, including medieval (Western) Europe, the binary opposition “oral vs. literate”, and concomitant ones such as “traditional vs. modern” or “primitive vs. civilized”, have long been successfully challenged in a wealth of theoretical and case studies, the interface between orality and literacy in Byzantine culture has remained curiously understudied, and undertheorized. Building on Margaret Mullett’s observation on the “multi-mediality” of Byzantine letters, this lecture inquires into the complex relationship between oral, written and visual elements in Byzantine (long-distance) communication. A close reading of a wide array of sources leads to the conclusion that, despite a heavy reliance on writing in many realms of public and private life, oral modes of communication were not only very much alive in Byzantium, but interacted dynamically with written and visual media.
Alexander Riehle received his PhD from LMU Munich and is currently an Assistant Professor in Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna. He held a Junior Fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks (2009/10) and was a Visiting Professor at CEU’s Medieval Studies Department in 2014. His research focuses on Byzantine literary culture, with a specialization in letter writing and rhetoric. Forthcoming publications include a monograph on the letter collections of Nikephoros Choumnos, A Companion to Byzantine Epistolography and the Lexikon byzantinischer Autoren (co-edited with Michael Grünbart).
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Dirk Krausmüller 8 December, 2015 10:00 - 10:40
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