Witness Literature in Byzantium

This book analyzes Byzantine examples of witness literature, a genre that focuses on eyewitness accounts written by slaves, prisoners, refugees, and other victims of historical atrocity. It focuses on such episodes in three nonfictional texts John Kaminiates Capture of Thessaloniki (904), Eustathios of Thessalonikis Capture of Thessaloniki (1186), and Niketas Choniates History (ca. 120417) and the three extant twelfth-century Komnenian novels to consider how the authors positions as both eyewitness and victim require an interpretive method that distinguishes witness literature from other kinds of writing about the past. Drawing on theoretical developments in the fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (such as Giorgio Agambens homo sacer and Michel Foucaults biopolitics) and comparisons with modern examples (Elie Wiesels Night and Primo Levis If This is a Man), Witness Literature emphasizes the affective, subjective, and experiential in medieval Greek historical writing.