Constructing and Addressing Female Voices in Late Byzantine Literary Culture: From Epistolography to Ethopoeia

This project offers the first systematic analysis of the role and place of women within late Byzantine literary culture (1204-1453).

Through detailed analyses of the manifold ways in which women engaged with literary and manuscript culture - as authors, patronesses, addressees of letters and epigrams, dedicatees in poetical and ethopoetical texts, and scribes - my research offers a novel account of their position in Byzantine society.

Furthermore, by setting my findings against a broader medieval context, I shall explore convergences, highlight Byzantine idiosyncrasies, and thus illuminate the ways in which late Byzantine women wielded far more agency than hitherto assumed.