Liminal and Heterotopic Functions of The Desert in Byzantine Literature
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| Citation | |
| Description | The contribution examined the character and the functions of the desert in two Byzantine genres that narrate about liminal heroes and liminal experiences: the hagiographic edifying story and the heroic poetry. I distinguish two related but different functions of the desert in these genres: first, it is a point of transition—between here and there, the secular and the divine, the Christian and the non-Christian, the moral and the immoral—and the three-fold Gennepian structure of a liminal experience can be clearly discerned. Second, it is a setting where liminality becomes one (but not the only one) specific feature of space which perhaps could be appropriately labelled with the Foucaultian term ‘heterotopia’: in this case, the space and the community of desert fathers living there create a set of special social and cultural conditions that influence the acting characters and the occurring events, without necessarily providing the characters (and the audiences) with the complete transitional experience. I presented these functions of the desert on the example edifying stories by Anastasios Sinaites (mid-7th century), and the poem of Digenis Akritis (I work with the G version, which was written down in the late 13th century but its origin most probably goes back to the 12th century). At the same time, I explored the impact of the genre on the treatment of the specific narrative space. |