Byzantine Book Epigrams

Abstract

Book epigrams (or metrical paratexts) are a poetic genre at the crossroads between writing and reading. They are narrowly connected to the production and use of the specific manuscript in which they appear. Book epigrams can be considered as inscriptions on books, sharing many features with inscriptions on other material objects (buildings, works of art, etc.). Book epigrams are paratexts, accompanying the main text of the manuscript. They praise the author of the text, express the motives of the patron, record the work of the scribe, admonish the readers, and structure the content of the book. Book epigrams mostly appear in the margins of the manuscript, or at its beginning or end. They stand visually apart through colour and script. Book epigrams are important sources of information about the patronage of books, reading culture, the reception of literature, and metrical developments, etc. A new online database is hoping to pave the way for new, and more comprehensive, research on this genre.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.