The twelfth century has led the rehabilitation of a once routinely maligned Byzantine literature at least since the late 1960's, when H. Hunger proposed a “reappraisal” of Komnenian literary culture; and, certainly, since the mid-80's, when A. Kazhdan published his influential pair of studies on the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Byzantium, accentuating an emergent humanism incubated in the literature of the period. Since then, the twelfth century has become the proving ground for the literary study of Byzantine texts. Raconter Byzance comes, at once, as the culmination of such efforts, and as a paradigm for what future study of Byzantine literature may still teach us. The book's thesis is at once simple and sweeping. Nilsson (henceforward “N”) contends that mid-century experiments in novel-length fiction represent, and may even have prompted, a reorientation of medieval Greek literature toward a new narrative poetics. N effectively turns Bakhtin on his head, placing the novel at the originating end of ‘novelization’ in Byzantium rather than as its consummation. In doing so, she illustrates the capacity of otherwise forgotten literary traditions to tell a different story from the one we have become accustomed to. As the double entendre of its title implies, Raconter Byzance describes both how the Byzantines told their own stories, and how we tell theirs and, by extension, our own. N sets the stage for her profile of twelfth-century narrative by briefly, albeit pointedly, recapitualing the cultural history of western perceptions of Byzantium. Even if you are unconvinced, as I am, by attempts to fold the story of Byzantium's reputation into that of a condescending European ‘orientalism’, you are still likely to agree with her that we must realign the frame through which we judge what histories are relevant to our modern predicament.
N begins her account of twelfth-century Byzantine narrative with the four new novels composed as part of a common, if not necessarily concerted, effort to revive a genre which had not lacked for readers in the millenium since the equally sudden appearance of ancient fiction. N distils her readings of these texts with the studied ease of a scholar with a long record of publication on the genre. She knows her mind with regard to these texts and does not need to rehearse every aspect of reasoning behind her arguments. She is notably convincing when describing how the form of these texts invited readers with knowledge of the ancient archetypes to participate in the performance of mimesis, staged in imaginatively and resourcefully imitative work. Free to play with form, these fictional narratives heightened expectations surrounding the structure and style of storytelling. The new narrative idiom spread well beyond fiction. “D]'une manière ou d'une autre,” writes N, “les textes byzantins du XIIe siècle sont apparentés aux romans quant à leur forme narrative soigneusement structurée, quant à l'emploi de motifs spécifiques et de traits rhétoriques”(p.172).
Even if one were to dissent from this expansive conclusion, noting that a text with the narrative robustness of Anna Komnene's Alexias was largely completed before the renaissance of the novel, one may still accept that the genre acted as a catalyst to greater narrative possibility. The novels inaugurated what N calls a discours romanesque, a combination of motifs and modes of exposition she discerns across an otherwise quite diverse cross section of texts that appealed to a common literary sensibility. Yet N also underscores that discours romanesque was not primarily a function of the novels' erotic content. It was, rather, one of formal potential, including the potential generated by the presence of a diffuse desire within the plot of the saint's life, historical accounts, or occasional speeches. For those not surprised to discover a discours romanesque in the narratively-bound genres of hagiography and historiography, with their strongly profiled protagonists and calculated ordering of events, N directs our attention to unexpected places, as well. She thus takes up the Odoiporikon of Konstantinos Manasses, a text she interprets in exemplary manner as part of the wider narrative fashion of its time, making a strong case for seeking the key to its meaning in its poetics rather than in its author's biographical circumstances.
And yet, as interesting as N's thesis will be to many, of potentially greater value to the wider discipline may be the book's illustration of what a genuinely literary treatment of Byzantine texts can look like. For while the field has amassed many such readings on a smaller scale, book-length studies of texts qua literature remain few and far between. Consequently, N is forced to articulate the equivalent of first principles in the pursuit of systematic literary study. This is no small contribution to a field which has had only glancing experience of modern, albeit sometimes excessively theorized, approaches. She thus notes that while authorial biography can be valuable, it is not indispensable to rigorous inquiry. We can discuss what, and more importantly, how a text means, without knowing who its author was or what his motives were. Indeed, N offers individual readings of texts, even as she locates them in a wider pattern of narrative emplotment. She is also quick to underline that formal similarities do not render the varied aims of texts, including their respective truth claims, moot; a point sometimes lost on those keen to blur generic boundaries by showcasing the artifice of all narrative. However, she is equally adamant when observing that we cannot disentangle historical content –some core of events or facts– from narratively constructed literary form. The past is simply not perceivable outside narrative.
Yet with so little of narratology's theoretical framework having originated in the study of medieval texts, and hardly any from medieval Greek literature, Byzantinists have been wary, when not outright dismissive, of such approaches. N's study stands as a still all too rare example of how medieval Greek texts may be brought to bear on such questions, with lessons for Byzantinists and non-Byzantinists alike. For the most part, she avoids subjecting the reader to the now hypertrophied formulas of narratology. When she does, as with Gerard Genette's “transtextual” scheme, she opts for economy and illustrates its application concisely enough to make the case for its usefulness.
One aspect of this book which reviews like this risk neglecting, although it is the one which should most recommend Raconter Byzance to a broad gamut of readers, is its author's unassuming appreciation of the texts she discusses. N likes her texts, and not just because they offer a stage for her to sound smart, a not uncommon vice of literary scholars. N acknowledges that delight in the pleasures on offer in Byzantine literature does not come easy, though she hints at an embarrassing (and largely suppressed) consonance, at times, between our own literary expectations and those of Byzantine audiences. Given the unlikelihood of unmediated appreciation of any pre-modern literature, Raconter Byzance enacts the source of such delight for a contemporary reader. Spend some time with this book and you are likely to seek out and (re)read for yourself at least a few of the texts mentioned here. What more can we ask of a literary scholar?
