Anna Komnene and Her Times (Garland Medieval Casebooks) [Paperback]

Thalia Gouma-Peterson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 19, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0815338511 | ISBN-13: 978-0815338512 | Edition: 1

This significant critical anthology explores the life of Anna Komnene, the Byzantine context in which she wrote, and the impact of the Alexiad on her times and on subsequent historical works of literature.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thalia Gouma-Peterson , is Professor of Art Histroy and Museum Director at the College of Wooster

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (May 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815338511
• ISBN-13: 978-0815338512
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #590,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Byzantine history, May 22, 2011

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A Reader "A reader" (Herndon, VA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Anna Komnene and Her Times (Garland Medieval Casebooks) (Paperback)

This book has many fine essays on various aspects of Anna Komnene's "Alexiad". Most of them, especially Emily Albu's on Bohemond and the Rooster, are very fine, much better than many other books on Byzantine history. Unfortunately, a few are your typical academic historian articles, including the compiler's article on Gender & Power in the Alexiad. This is probably the weakest article, with some of the most nonsensical gender related jargon I have ever had the misfortune to plow through. She does, eventually, get to the point, but the first few pages are not very useful.

Of all the things I have read about Anna Komnene and the Alexiad, and Anna's parents, the one thing that is possibly the most interesting and never addressed is the fact that Anna's mother, the Empress Irene, supported her claim to the throne over her son John's claim. There is no other medieval queen or empress that I am aware of, in western or eastern Europe, that would or did choose to support a daughter over a son. What was going on here that would have encouraged Irene to do this? Perhaps there are hints in Nicetas Choniates history, but nothing that I could discern either in the Alexiad or in these essays.

4.0 out of 5 stars A good set of papers, December 31, 2011

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Kirialax (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anna Komnene and Her Times (Garland Medieval Casebooks) (Paperback)

As this is a set of papers and not a traditional monograph, a review will have to examine the articles individually. I'm not going to discuss them all, but rather give some brief comments on a few of them.

Ruth Macrides' article on who wrote the 'Alexiad' is an important contribution to scholarship ever since J.D. Howard-Johnston's article on the same topic appeared in Alexios I Komnenos (Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations) over a decade ago. It is not a perfect article, and while I do not find her ideas of putting the pen firmly back in Anna's hand completely convincing, there are several useful critiques to weaknesses in Howard-Johnston's work on the topic. This article does help the case that Anna authored the 'Alexiad', but it does not seal it completely, and Bryennios remains as a possible major source for the work.

Paul Magdalino's article on references to the twelfth century in the 'Alexiad' is possibly the best and most useful article in this volume for understanding how Anna's time and place of writing influenced her work. It is important that she wrote under virtual house arrest in a monastery after attempting to seize the throne from her brother upon the death of Alexios, and her hostility towards the regimes of John Komnenos and Manuel Komnenos come through in the text in subtle ways. Magdalino mentions some of these, such as her subtle criticisms of astrology, a favourite practice of Manuel, or her apparent ignorance in the formation of the crusade which was designed to shield Alexios from the twelfth-century criticism for bringing Latins to the east.

A quick note on some of the lesser articles: Barbara Hill's article on Anna's attempt at removing her brother from power is fairly complete and rather useful, if basic. Emily Albu's article on Anna's story about Bohemond travelling back to western Europe in a casket with a dead rooster on his chest to make it smell like he was dead is a good and convincing treatment of stories of that nature in Norman literature. I did not find Jakov Ljubarskij's article on the 'Alexiad' as a masterpiece of Byzantine literature terribly convincing, but that is simply because I've read enough about the 'Alexiad' to be unsure as to whether it is a complete text. If it is not complete, then the best that we can do is consider it a masterpiece by chance, or an incomplete masterpiece.

While this is a book on Anna Komnene, I have to admit that I was a little frustrated by the amount of space that was devoted to women and literature in Byzantine in the eleventh and twelfth century. This is not a bad thing per se, but I cannot say that much of it helped me to understand the 'Alexiad' any better, and I seriously doubt that anyone who just wants to read some things about medieval women are going to read this book - it is a collection of scholarly articles by scholars. Some of those articles are very good and provide some important information towards understanding Anna Komnene and 'The Alexiad', but some are not particularly helpful or inspiring. All told, this is still an essential set of papers for anyone studying Byzantine literature, the 'Alexiad' or the history of the Komnenian period. It does not replace Georgina Buckler's indispensable Anna Comnena a Study (Oxford University Press Academic Monograph Reprints), but it was never intended to, and provides some useful modern scholarly interpretations that should be used alongside that important earlier work.