The Letters of Psellos ─ Cultural Networks and Historical Realities

The Letters of Psellos is the first detailed study of the correspondence of Michael Psellos, a leading Byzantine intellectual, politician, and writer of the eleventh century. Psellos' corpus of over 500 letters represents a historical source of great significance for the study of society and culture of the time: literary masterpieces in and of themselves, yet often complex and difficult to understand in their entirety, they not only rebound with subtlety and humor, but also offer invaluable information on myriad subjects ranging from the political culture of Byzantium and its civil administration to social codes, religious beliefs, and popular culture.

This volume consists of two complementary parts designed to make Psellos' letters as widely accessible as possible, both to the specialist academic community and to a wider non-specialist audience. The first part contains five essays offering detailed historical and literary analyses of a considerable number of the letters across a range of different topics, including the financial management of monasteries, the friendship of Psellos and John Mauropous, and the challenges posed by Psellian irony. While the essays are supplemented by individual appendices containing the translated text of the pertinent letters, the second part of the book presents annotated summaries in English of the entirety of Psellos' correspondence, compiled over many years as part of the Prosopography of the Byzantine World project and supported by substantial excursuses and notes. The result is an engaging and accessible shortcut into these bewildering and fascinating letters and an essential resource for the study of eleventh-century Byzantine society and culture through the pen of one of its pre-eminent figures.

Michael Jeffreys read Classics at Cambridge before embarking upon a decade of high-school teaching, during which time he earned his doctorate from Birkbeck College, London, on the relation of written early modern Greek poetry to oral verse in its background. After scholarships in the USA and Greece he became lecturer and finally professor of Modern Greek at the University of Sydney. After taking early retirement in 2000 he has since continued his research alongside his wife in Oxford, concentrating largely on issues at the interface of Byzantine Greek language and literature.
Marc D. Lauxtermann is Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Exeter College. Before coming to Oxford in 2007, he served as Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His books include The Spring of Rhythm. An Essay on the Political Verse and Other Byzantine Metres and Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres. Texts and Contexts, Volume I, the second volume to which he is currently working on. His recent publications focus on eleventh- and twelfth-century prose and poetry as well as on scholars, grammars, and dictionaries in early modern Europe.