The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne: A Byzantine Love Romance of the 13th Century [Paperback]

The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne is a verse romance about love and adventure written around the middle of the 13th century at the Byzantine imperial court of Nicaea. This edition is the first full scholarly translation into English of one of the most attractive narratives about love in Byzantium.This volume offers the first fully scholarly translation into English of the Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, a love romance written around the middle of 13th century at the imperial court of Nicaea, at the time when Constantinople was still under Latin dominion. With its approximately 4600 verses, Livistros and Rodamne is the longest and the most artfully composed of the eight surviving Byzantine love romances. It was almost certainly composed to be recited in front of an aristocratic audience by an educated poet experienced in the Greek tradition of erotic fiction, yet at the same time knowledgeable of the Medieval French and Persian romances of love and adventure. The poet has created a very modern narrative filled with attractive episodes, including the only scene of demonic incantation in Byzantine fiction. The language of the romance is of a high poetic quality, challenging the translator at every step. Finally, Livistros and Rodamne is the only Byzantine romance that consistently constructs the Latin world of chivalry as an exotic setting, a type of occidentalism aiming to tame and to incorporate the Frankish Other in the social norms of the Byzantine Self after the Fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204. Agapitos captures every sound, rhythm, and movement with attention to the lyricism of the original language... The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne is a literary triumph and a solid step forward in the right direction in Byzantine and world literary studies.
Christina Christoforatou, Speculum

Panagiotis Agapitos' translation of the mid-thirteenth-century romance Livistros and Rodamne does justice to one of the great works of Byzantine literature through lã1