This completed project focused on a time of profound cultural change (1204–1453) and was aimed at studying the language of late Byzantine historians. In addressing questions concerning authors’ linguistic/stylistic choices and the mimetic and innovative tendencies in their writings, this research group benefited greatly from historical sociolinguistics and from the Lexikon zur Byzantinischen Gäzität, edited by Erich Trapp.
Andrea Cuomo and Vratislav Zervan worked on conservative and innovative tendencies in the historical works of late Byzantine authors, and presented the outcomes of their research in the new critical edition of John Kananos’ account of the siege of Constantinople in 1422, in the collective volume “Die Lehnwörter im Wortschatz der spätbyzantinischen historiographischen Literatur”, and at several international conferences.
Dissemination
Wiener Soziolinguistisches Forum
International Conference: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Late Byzantine History Writing
Erich Trapp (project leader)
Andrea Massimo Cuomo (postdoc researcher)
Vratislav Zervan (postdoc researcher)