Character construction and space in Digenis Akritis
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | The characters in medieval literature are often rightly labelled as flat and stereotypical. Serving as mere vehicles for the plot, they represent a type “individualized by means of the story, but not by means of personal and non-transferable characteristics” (Schulz, Erzähltheorie, 2012, 12). In other words, the medieval literary character is constructed in and through the story. This undoubtedly stands also for characters in Digenis Akritis. The aim of the proposed contribution is to study the story space as another means of characterization. I briefly analyse several examples from the G version of the poem: Digenis washing himself and changing after his first hunt (4,213–245), the Arabian girl abandoned in the desert (5,30–63), and the first encounter of Digenis and Maximou (6,546–583). I argue that, on one hand, the surroundings within which a character is presented, the way in which this space is represented, and the spatial details brought to the fore mirror his/her inner feelings and character features, as well as actual life circumstances, and thus serve as a means of character construction. This function of the story space explains the great attention paid by the author/redactor of the G version to the representation of space. |