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BY-NC-ND 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2021

The Letters of Michael Psellos and their Function in Byzantine Epistolary Culture

From the book Exploring Written Artefacts

  • Michael Grünbart

Abstract

The transmission of Byzantine letters still lacks a new interpretative approach, leaving aside the idea of an archetypus. Michael Psellos’ letters (eleventh century) may serve as an example to demonstrate how the process of rhetorical recycling and re-using of letters worked. His letters are preserved in a large number of manuscripts, but none of them contains a complete collection. Similarly to the late-antique epistolographer Libanios, Psellos became a model of letter writing for later generations and parts of his texts have been adapted in new contexts. The Psellian letter collection therefore offers an excellent casestudy to analyse how his manuscripts and texts were used again and again in the course of history.

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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