Anashkin Anton

Genre Problems of Question-and-Answer Literature in Context of Late Byzantine Canonical Writing

Abstract

The paper examines a little-studied topic in the Byzantine philology. The object of the research is monuments of the late Byzantine (XI-XV cc.) canonical questionsand-replies’ literature. The main area of the research is the genre of these monuments of the Byzantine ecclesiastical thought. The aim of the paper is to attempt to determine the genre of the texts on the basis of its historical and philological analysis. The modern researches of the Byzantine erotapokrtical literature bring authors’ attention to the issue of the generic peculiarity of the works: are erotapokriseis either genre or literary form? Because of heterogeneousness of this corpus of the texts in its type and content, it is too diffi cult to find a solution. The present research is intended to describe the history and reasons of question-and-answer literature (canonical, in particular), paying attention not only to the ancient literary tradition of questions-and-answers, but the tradition of other cultures. The findings let the author conclude that canonical questions-andreplies’ literature, developed from the classical literary tradition, corresponds to the epistolary genre (rather the genre of the official ecclesiastical correspondence). The relevance of the research is determined by the lack of scholarly works on the analysis of genre of late Byzantine canonical questions-and-replies.

Keywords

Questions and Replies, erotapokriseis, epistolary genre, Byzantine literature, canonical monuments, canon law

References

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Information about the author

Anashkin Anton