The present article provides an overview of the main ritualistic masks, disguises, and improvised scenic plays in South-Eastern Europe performed during quête-song processions in winter and spring. These may be considered the first steps in the evolution towards organised, more complex folk theatre performances, which usually take place in the festive carnival season. The presentation starts from Greek material and proceeds to comparative approaches of similar phenomena in other Balkan regions as well as Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, Turkey, and Asia Minor.
The present study offers a general overview of Byzantine visual poetry, based on older studies including works by Paul Speck (1964; 2003), Odysseas Lampsidis (1982), Wolfram Hörandner (1990; 2009) and Ulrich Ernst (1991), focusing on a special poetical form where the text is interwoven with other intexts (e.g. acro-, meso- and telestics). These poetical forms are called carmina cancellata or carmina quadrata in Latin and Gittergedichte in German. The Greek term "woven verses" [στίχοι υφαντοί] was introduced by Eustathios of Thessalonike (c. 1110–1195). But this type is scarcely known in modern studies of visual poetry. One of the main aims of the present study is therefore to emphasize the importance of the Greek term στίχοι υφαντοί as a terminus technicus for the Byzantine examples, as they differ in their metric construction from the Latin ones. The study associates the form with the general metaphor of text as a woven texture. The paper compares Byzantine and Latin examples as well as Modern Greek visual poetry. In addition, it examines the instrumentalization of the genre as a tool of propaganda, as an imperial and mannerist form, raising questions concerning the mediality and public presentation of Byzantine visual poems.
Ioannis Polemis (1862–1924), a poet and playwright whose work is to be placed in the interim period running from the Romanticism of the First Athenian School to the New Athenian School, wrote, among other things, plays of one or more acts, many of which were staged during his lifetime. His theatrical works include the dramatized fairy tales The Bet, The Bewitched Glass, The Obscure King, and Once Upon A Time, which are distinguished for both their fable-like tones and the elements taken from folk tradition. Folklore and fable together with medieval legends and the people's national history have been fundamental sources for Romanticism since the nineteenth century. In Polemis's dramatized fairy tales, we can find romantic themes such as nature worship, nocturnal landscapes illuminated by the moon, intense local colour, the hero's solitary journey, wandering, the use of symbols, idealized condemned love, death, the absolute, the emotional, the Supreme. However, although the author oft en makes use of these elements of Romanticism, he doesn't reach destructive passion, pessimism, or deep melancholy. He just creates an idyllic atmosphere and uses picturesque descriptions and intense feelings.
This paper focuses on the folly of old age as a literary motif. It aims to demonstrate that the first appearance of the motif in Greek literature is not in the early 16th century vernacular poem Peri gerondos na mi pari koritsi, as is generally believed. To the contrary, the motif of foolish old people, oft en treated satirically, emerges in Byzantine literature from the twelfth century onwards. Th e paper places its initial focus on the theme of unequal marriage and then presents other ways of mocking older people in poetry and in satire. It also discusses the use of the same motif in Byzantine historiography. Th e overall conclusion is that the emergence of this motif, typical for European literature of the Renaissance and afterwards, does not constitute a rare exception, but plays a major part in the innovative tendencies of the Komnenian period.
Петербургский историк Александр С. Мыльников (1929–2003) долгое время был ведущим российским специалистом по Чехии XVIII–XIX вв. Обладая даром типологического обобщения, он активно участвовал в компаративном изучении Центральной Европы, способствуя прив- несению в исследования культурологической и этнологической составляющих. Много сделал Мыльников для разработки истории славистики, выделяясь среди своих российских коллег интересом к истокам этой дисциплины и немецкому вкладу в нее. В статье представлен творческий путь талантливого и разностороннего ученого и определяется его особое место в гуманитаристике второй половины XX в. and St. Petersburg historian Alexander S. Myl'nikov (1929–2003) for a long time was a leading Russian specialist in the 18–19th centuries Czechia. Having the talent of typological generalization he was actively involved in the comparative studies of Central Europe and enriched this field by cultural and ethnological components. Myl'nikov did a lot for the elaboration of the history of Slavistics, paying a special attention to the origins of this discipline and the German contribution to it. The article presents professional path of the creative and versatile historian and clarifies his unique place in the humanities of the second half of the 20th century.