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The three works of Procopius of Caesarea, the History of the Wars, the Buildings and the Secret History, form a corpus which can be profitably studied as a whole. My thesis is a typology of the visual in Procopius’ corpus, which is embedded in a study of narrative technique. It concerns itself with the representation of material reality and the complex relationship between materiality and the text. It utilises the digressive and the descriptive as an indirect entry point to expose Procopius’ literary finesse and his use of poikilia. In the first half of this thesis, the main object of my study is the representation of the material world in Procopius. The first chapter is devoted to the first book of the Buildings as it depicts the city of Constantinople. The second chapter moves to the representation of space and the third chapter to that of objects of all sizes and kinds. From these three different angles, I demonstrate how the visual is deeply charged with both ideological and meta-textual intentions. The second half of the thesis goes beyond materiality to examine what I discuss as the imaginaire of Procopius. The fourth chapter examines the way violence is depicted in a material and spectacular manner as well as its meta-textual implications, and the fifth and final chapter addresses the omnipresence of the supernatural in the corpus as well as Procopius’ self-representation as narrator and character. While preoccupied to some extent with ideological and political concerns, this thesis is first and foremost centred on the text itself and how its relationship to the description of material culture throws light on a crucial author on the cusp between the classical and the medieval imaginaire, one of the most significant authors in Byzantine literary culture.

The diploma thesis The Figure of Saint Procopius in Historiographical and Hagiographical Texts of the 16th and 17th Century observes, how the earthly life and the posthumous effect of the saint are narrated in early modern historiographical and hagiographical literary relics. The thesis is also dedicated to miracles, which happened because of the intercession of Saint Procopius in the middle ages, and the fortune of the Slavonic monastic community of Sázava until the year 1097. It focuses on the changes, which Saint Procopius's theme has undergone in particular early modern works. It considers medieval legends of Saint Procopius, too. As a supplement to the thesis there is also a list of motifs connected with Saint Procopius, which are mentioned in early modern historiographical and hagiographical texts.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:17:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Lyvia Vasconcelos Baptista.pdf: 1002555 bytes, checksum: 3c9eb8eb3debc14cbb29bf07fb861d06 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-03-28 / Profundamente marcada pelos elementos da Antiguidade clássica, a literatura bizantina apresenta-se como um curioso crisol de influências e condutas, o que reflete a própria situação do Império. O tema desta dissertação resume-se na percepção dos elementos que aproximam a obra Guerras Persas construída por Procópio de Cesaréa, no VI século d.C. e a História da Guerra do Peloponeso, elaborada por Tucídides, no V século a.C.. Num primeiro momento apresentaremos os historiadores ateniense e bizantino, inseridos nos seus contextos de produção e discorreremos sobre a forma como a historiografia trabalhou e utilizou suas imagens. Em seguida analisaremos os seus relatos num movimento relacional, lançando olhares a seus projetos historiográficos, a partir de dois princípios específicos: o metodológico e o teleológico. Nesse movimento, os relatos epidêmicos presentes em suas obras são abordados como um momento vantajoso para a percepção daquilo que movia e fundamentava a escrita da história nas obras destes historiadores, e da atitude classicista existente no interior do Império Bizantino.

Cette thèse s’intéresse aux historiens classicisants de langue grecque de l’Antiquité tardive. Elle développe une analyse sociale de ces historiens et de leurs écrits. Son objectif principal est de souligner les interactions entre l’écriture de l’histoire, vu comme une pratique sociale, et la société romaine tardo-antique. La première partie dresse la biographie des historiens, d’Eunape de Sardes à Théophylacte Simocatta. Le profil social de ces historiens y est défini, et une attention particulière est portée aux liens entre activité littéraire et carrière professionnelle. La seconde partie étudie plus spécifiquement les élites provinciales tardo-antiques, groupe auquel appartiennent en majorité nos historiens. Elle explique pourquoi pratiquement tous les historiens étaient des avocats et comment ces derniers en venaient à écrire de l’histoire. La dernière partie analyse les fondements sociaux de l’histoire. Elle souligne ce que l’histoire devait à l’éducation tardo-antique et montre comment les vertus de l’historien reflétaient les vertus sociales attendues d’un membre de l’élite tardo-antique. / The main objective of this dissertation is to offer a social analysis of the classicizing historians of late antiquity. It aims to underline the interactions between history-writing and society. The first part presents the biographies of late antique classicising historians, from Eunapius of Sardis to Theophylact Simocatta. It describes the social profile of those historians, while insisting on the interactions between professional career and literary endeavours. The second part explains why most historians were lawyers and analyzes the place history-writing occupies in their social life. The third part deals with the social foundations of history writing. It focuses on the role of rhetorical education in the formation of future historians and shows how the virtues of the historian mirrored the social virtues of late antique elites.

The master thesis presents and analyses a range of different ways in which the motif of the forest was treated in late-medieval literary sources as an element of thematic and compositional construction of the text. At the theoretical basis of the thesis is the concept of diachronic text reception and adaptations which bring along the transmission and simultaneous transformation of the use of topoi, while this process is being related to the development of the literary chronotopos signalizing a change in the public's horizon of expectation. The majority of sources for analysis are drawn from Czech sources of the long 14th century - courtly and chivalric romance, the Old Czech verse legend of St. Procopius and the Dalimil Chronicle - while a shorter part of the thesis is devoted to the presentation of individual tendencies in the development of the use of the forest topos in English and French literary allegory of the 14th and 15th centuries. In detailed comparison of specific passages from Old Czech texts with their actual models in other languages (Old Middle German, Latin), the thesis demonstrates, upon the example of the forest topos, that topoi do not represent fixed, inalterable clichés, but actually exhibit intense shifts in function, content and theme.

The basic aim of the thesis is to investigate whether the Romans of the East (Byzantines) during the 6th to the 8th centuries were interested in the Latin west and the imperial rule over it. In the first part of the work, the various discourses concerning the origins of the Justinianic conquest or reconquest of Africa and Italy articulated in the contemporary sources are identified and evaluated; the only one which cannot be shown or supposed to have been officially articulated is the discourse of a source of Pseudo-Zachariah Scholasticus which makes African and maybe also Italian exulants complaining in the imperial court about the local rulers responsible for the Vandal and Gothic wars. After some other preliminary studies (e.g. concerning the so-called problem of Theodericʼs constitutional position), it is concluded that the emperor Justinian was not interested in an ideologically founded restoration of the empire, but made the western wars because of his contacts with western aristocrats. In the second part of the thesis, the presentation of the Justinianic western wars and western events or realities in the works of the Byzantine historians from Marcellinus Comes and Procopius to Theophylactus Simocatta (the 6th to the early 7th centuries) is investigated and an attempt is made to explore...