title: Whatever You Bestow on Him, You Will Bestow on Me: Key Motifs of Early Byzantine Letters of Recommendation
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Chernoglazov, Dmitrii
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2024-12-03T17:26:25Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2024-12-03T17:26:25Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2024-03
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Chernoglazov D. Whatever You Bestow on Him, You Will Bestow on Me: Key Motifs of Early Byzantine Letters of Recommendation. Philologia Classica 2024, 19 (1), 101–120. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2024.107
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2024.107
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/48093
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: The letter of recommendation was known in Antiquity as a separate genre of letter writing for
  which a certain set of compositional techniques and formulae were developed. In Byzantium,
  too, the letter of recommendation was in great demand: letters in which the author presents
  his protégé to the addressee and, as a rule, asks him to perform something for him are not
  difficult to find in the epistolary collections of many authors from the 4th to the 15th century.
  Meanwhile, while the ancient letter of recommendation is well studied, the etiquette of this
  genre in the Byzantine tradition has hardly been investigated yet. The purpose of this piece is
  to characterize the etiquette norms of Greek letter of recommendation in the early Byzantine
  period (4th — early 7th centuries). The subject of the study are, first of all, literarische Privatbriefe,
  belonging to Libanius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Synesius
  of Cyrene, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Procopius of Gaza and others, but also private papyrus
  letters. Their analysis leads to the conclusion that there is a wide variability of the canons of the
  letter of recommendation, the absence of any rigid scheme that presupposes a clear sequence
  of structural elements. At the same time, it reveals six recurrent etiquette motifs, all of which
  are subordinated to a single goal — to persuade the addressee to patronize the recommended
  person. These motifs are analyzed in detail, and stable formulas are indicated for some of
  them. An attempt is made to determine to what extent the canons of Greek letters of recommendation
  of the 4th–7th centuries go back to the ancient tradition. The letters of recommendation
  of Cicero and Pliny the Younger, as well as letters preserved on late antique papyri, are
  used as material for comparative analysis.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: en
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Philologia Classica;Volume 19; Issue 1
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Early Byzantine letter-writing
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: epistolary etiquette
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: letter of recommendation
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: ancient letter-writing
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: papyrus letters
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: Whatever You Bestow on Him, You Will Bestow on Me: Key Motifs of Early Byzantine Letters of Recommendation
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 07.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/48093/1/07.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 753,3 kB