Byzantine perceptions of the outsider in the eleventh and twelfth centuries : a method
Abstract
This thesis examines the portrayal of outsiders in Michael Psellos's Chronographia, Anna Komnene's Alexiad, and
Niketas Choniates's Narrative - using sociological theories of deviancy. The
twofold aim is to "treat texts seriously", localized in Jakobson's speech-event
nexus of addresser, context, content, contact, code and addressee; and
secondly to understand the texts as statements of the ideology of the
dominant elite.
Outsiders are defined (using the labelling orientation) as people
successfully defined as deviants; deviant behaviour is whatever they do. The
dominant elite creates cultural boundaries, and places individuals in outsider
roles on the other side of those boundaries. Outsiders can be understood only
in terms of who defines them as deviant; there is no material reality to
deviancy. Stereotypes, which identify social categories of people by evaluative
trait-characteristics, are necessary elements of human cognition; they become
prejudice only when they are over-generalized, based on too limited data,
applied too widely and maintained in the face of contrary empirical evidence.
The analysis of the three texts in depth allows the identification of those
groups labelled as outsiders by these expositors of the dominant ideology. My
conclusion is that these authors portray a picture of the Byzantine outsider,
which is coherent between this limited sample group, allowing for individual
variation. These authors used stereotypes to conceptualize and encode in the
linguistic and lexicographical complexities of their texts the outsiders they
identified in their societies. Their presentation uses stereotypes, but does not
descend to prejudice.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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