Jump to content

User:Erik1434/sandbox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Erik1434 (talk | contribs) at 20:15, 19 April 2013 (Added to "Representations of Gender" and "Gender and Style" ~~~~). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Work on the Alexiad

Below is my work for my Medieval Women class, Spring 2013, concerning the Alexiad.

Gender and Authorship

Questions of Authorship

There has been much debate as to whether the Alexiad was in fact written by Anna Komnene herself. For one scholar, the text gives very few comments that would suggest the author's gender or any other aspect of their background aside from a few explicit mentions. [1] This has led some scholars to argue that the Alexiad was not written by a woman at all, but by some other male author.[2] This belief, put forward by Howard-Johnston, focuses mainly on the military sections of the Alexiad, and suggests that Anna was merely working from her husbands field notes, thus Howard-Johnston renames it "Nicephoros's Alexiad."[3]

Largely, however, is is agreed that Anna Komnene was the author. Explicit mentions in the text of her engagement, her role as a wife, and the rolling commentary on her female modesty that influences her writing make Anna's authorship of the Alexiad "unmistakable."[4] She certainly could have written about military affairs, since she was able to accompany her father, the king, on military campaign.[5] The great detail of her father's home life and military style, combined with her own personal experiences and mentions of femininity, provide a strong case for her authorship of the Alexiad.

Representations of Gender

In her Alexiad, Anna portrays gender and gender stereotypes in a unique way. Like her male counterparts, she characterizes women along the typical stereotypes, such as being "liable to tears and as cowardly in the face of danger."[6] Yet, despite this, women in the Alexiad never cry, with the exception of Alexios' funeral, in which grief is the appropriate cultural response.[7] Likewise, none of the female characters act in a cowardly way.[8] She nods to her own gender in a similar way when mentioning her own tears while writing certain events. Immediately, however, she informs the reader that she will stop crying in order to properly return to her duty of history, which she does twice in the narrative.[9] By so doing, she shows a desire to control aspects that are, for her culture, feminine.[10] Overall, however, Anna concerns herself primarily with intellect, which she attributes to both men and women, and allows for women to actively break out of societal gender roles in the Alexiad.[11]

Gender and Style

Anna Komnene's somewhat unique historical style has been attributed to her gender. Her style is noteworthy in that it includes both a history of her father's actions durring the First Crusade, but also narrative reactions to some of these events. Her opinions and commentary on particular events in an otherwise historical text has been assigned to her gender both positively and negatively.[12] While the Roman historian Edward Gibbon saw this "gendered" narrative to betray "in every page the vanity of a female author,"[13]

Notes

  1. ^ Peter Frankopan, "Perception and Projections of Prejudice: Anna Comnena, the Alexiad and the First Crusade," in Gendering the Crusades, ed. Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 68.
  2. ^ Frankopan, 69. For examples, see Howard-Johnston, 'Anna Komnene', 260-302.
  3. ^ J. Howard-Johnston, "Anna Komnene and the Alexiad," in Alexios I Komnenos. Papers of the Second Belfast Byzantine International Colloquium, 14-16 April 1989 (Belfast, 1996), 289, 302.
  4. ^ Diether R. Reinsch, "Women's Literature in Byzantium? – The Case of Anna Komnene," in Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 96.
  5. ^ Reinsch, 98.
  6. ^ Barbara Hill, "A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Power by Anna Komnene," in Band 23 of Byzantinische Forschungen (Amsterdam: Verlag Adolf M. Hakkert, 1996), 45.
  7. ^ Hill, 45-6.
  8. ^ Hill, 46.
  9. ^ Komnene Alexiad 4.8.1 and Prol. 4.2.
  10. ^ Leonora Neville, "Lamentation, History, and Female Authorship in Anna Komnene's Alexiad," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 53 (2013): 213.
  11. ^ Carolyn L. Connor, Women of Byzantium, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 257.
  12. ^ Frankopan, 69.
  13. ^ Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1776-88, repr. 3 vols, London, 1994), 3: 69.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Erik1434/sandbox&oldid=551182992"