Alla titlar av »Lilli Hölzlhammer«

In the late eleventh century, Symeon Seth – a Byzantine scholar originally from Antioch – produced a translation of the highly popular Arabic fable collection Kalila wa-Dimnah and dedicated it to the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. As an educational and at the same time entertaining text, the translation under the title Stephanites kai Ichnelates quickly spread in the Byzantine Empire. Exactly how Symeon Seth changed the source text in his translation and how these changes affected the didacted content is, however, hard to tell, since there are no surviving Arabic manuscripts from before the thirteenth century.The present book sets out to address these issues. It reconstructs as closely as possible the connection between the Arabic sources and the Greek translation and rethinks medieval translation practices. It also analyzes the didactic techniques by which the text sought to teach its readers. In addition, a close examination of manuscripts and of Symeon Seth’s translation practices offer new methodological approaches. First, the comparison of manuscripts and other writings attributed to the same historical person can help constructing what in this study is termed a writing persona. Second, the analysis of didactic narratological devices employed in the text furthers the understanding of how texts attempt to educate their readers.

This volume ensues from the conference Enchanted reception: Religion and the supernatural in medieval Troy narratives, held at Ghent University in June 2021 and organized by the two co-editors of this publication. We would like to thank all participants for the fruitful exchanges that took place on that occasion, as well as all the authors for their enthusiasm for contributing to this volume. Special thanks go to Prof. Ingela Nilsson and the Studia Graeca Upsaliensia series in Sweden, who have made this publication possible. The conference and this volume have received funding from the European Research Council project Novel Echoes at Ghent University, as well as from the Flanders Research Foundation, the Special Research Fund of Ghent University, Åke Wibergs stiftelse and Stiftelsen Konung Gustaf VI Adolfs fond för svensk kultur.