The Twelfth-century Byzantine Novels And The Society Of The Empire Under The Comneni

From the late eleventh century to twelfth century was a turning point in Byzantine historical development.The empire was invaded by multiple enemies such as the Turks,Normans and nomadic people from the North and lost a large number of territories,including Asia Minor and Italy.It became a small country in Eastern Europe,one of many forces in the Mediterranean region.With the change of territory and power,the ideology of Byzantine people has also changed significantly.There were many innovations in Byzantine culture during this period,and the emergence of Byzantine novels was one of them.In the middle of the twelfth Century,fictional stories of love and adventure appeared in Constantinople.They are called Byzantine novels by modern scholars.According to extant manuscripts,there were at least four novels during that time,three of them are preserved intact and one in fragments.This is the first time that such kind of texts appeared in the Byzantine Empire,also the first revival of ancient Greek and Roman novels ever since the late antiquity.This unique phenomenon was triggered by the changes happened in Byzantine empire during this period.In the mean time,these novels also reflected the characteristics of the Byzantine society at this time.This thesis attempts to explore the historical changes in the Byzantine empire in the twelfth Century by analyzing the contents and background of Byzantine novels.This thesis is divided into three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction involves the origin of the topic,research trends and important reference materials,as well as the definition of Byzantine novels.The text is divided into four sections.The first section briefly discusses the historical background of the twelfth century,the second section mainly introduces the background of the authors and the main contents of four Byzantine novels,the third section summarizes some characteristics of Byzantine novels,and the fourth section tries to analyze the society and culture of the empire during the Komnenos dynasty based on the Byzantine novels.The conclusion discusses the relationship between historical development and cultural revolution of Komnenos dynasty and the birth of Byzantine novels,as well as the history and culture reflected in those novels.