An Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds is the first English verse translation of the Greek satirical poem Diegesis Paidiophrastos ton Zoon ton Tetrapodon. Written by an anonymous author in fourteenth-century Byzantium, this vernacular allegorical poem has long been recognized as a unique document, one that appears to have originated independently of comparable works in other traditions. A medieval Animal Farm, the story describes a convention of animals in which each beast vaunts its uses to humanity while denigrating others, resulting in a cataclysmic battle. The authors provide extensive textual analysis and notes on the form, style, and context of the poem.

Nicholas (U. of Melbourne, Australia) and Baloglou (State U. of New York, Oswego) have done an admirable job in creating a translation and commentary of this 15th-century Byzantine text that's accessible to specialist and non-specialist alike. The tales are of very human-like activities, banter, and scuffles between talking animals. In their lengthy (159- page) introduction to the side-by-side translation, Nicholas and Baloglou describe the political and cultural context of the work, emphasizing the political innuendo that might be gleaned from the tale's satirical tone. They describe the tales within the context of other texts, both Byzantine and foreign. Appendices provide the texts of some of these influences, as well as discussion of literary and historical issues raised in the animals' stories. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

"Byzantine Narrative: Papers in Honour of Roger Scott"--"Copyright"--"Dedication" -- "Contents" -- "Introduction" -- "Roger Scott" -- "List of Illustrations" -- "KEYNOTE PAPERS" -- "Novelisation in Byzantium: Narrative after the Revival of Fiction" -- "Narrating Justinian: From Malalas to Manasses" -- "NARRATIVE IN HISTORIANS, CHRONICLES & FICTION" -- "To Narrate the Events of the Past: On Byzantine Historians, and Historians on Byzantium" -- "Tradition and Originality in Photius' Historical Reading" -- "Narrating the Trials and Death in Exile of Pope Martin I and Maximus the Confessor" -- "The Use of Metaphor in Michael Psellos' Chronographia" -- "War and Peace in the Alexiad" -- "Moralising History: the Synopsis Historiarum of John Skylitzes" -- "The Representation of Augustae in John Skylitzes' Synopsis Historiarum" -- "The Madrid Skylitzes as an Audio-Visual Experiment" -- "The Goths and the Bees in Jordanes: A Narrative of No Return" -- "From 'Fallen Woman' to Theotokos: Music, Women's Voices and Byzantine Narratives of Gender Identity" -- "How the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds became a Tale: Grafting Narrative" -- "Lamenting the Fall or Disguising a Manifesto? The Poem Conquest of Constantinople" -- "A Probable Solution to the Problem of the Chronicle of the Turkish Sultans" -- "NARRATIVE IN BYZANTINE ART" -- "The Narration of Christ' s Passion in Early Christian Art" -- "Observations on the Paintings of the Exodus Chapel, Bagawat Necropolis, Kharga Oasis, Egypt" -- "The Column of Arcadius: Retlections of a Roman Narrative Tradition" -- "Biblical Narrative in the Mosaics of Bishop Theodore's Cathedral, Aquileia" -- "Plato, Plutarch and the Sibyl in the Fresco Decoration of the Episcopal Church of the Virgin Ljeviška in Prizren" -- "Narrativity in Armenian Manuscript Illustration

This volume is dedicated to the topic of the human evaluation and interpretation of animals in ancient and medieval cultures. From a transcultural perspective contributions from Assyriology, Byzantine Studies, Classical Archaeology, Egyptology, German Medieval Studies and Jewish History look into the processes and mechanisms behind the transfer by people of certain values to animals, and the functions these animal-signs have within written, pictorial and performative forms of expression.

Focuses on the scholarly interests of the intellectual elites during the last two centuries of Byzantium and the cultural environment in which they flourished, as well as the interaction between secular and church circles in Constantinople, Thessaloniki, Athos and beyond.

The premise of Fallen Animals is that some how and in some way The Fall of Adam and Eve as related in the Bible has affected all living beings from the largest to the smallest, from the oldest to the youngest, regardless of gender and geography. The movement from the blissful arena of the Garden of Eden to the uncertain reality of exile altered in an overt or nuanced fashion the attitudes, perceptions, and consciousness of animals and humanity alike. Interpretations of these reformulations as well as the original story of the Paradise Garden have been told and retold for millennia in a variety of cultural contexts, languages, societies, and religious environments. Throughout all those retellings, animals have been a constant presence positively and negatively, actively and passively, from the creation of birds, fish, and mammals to the agency of the serpent in the Fall narrative. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is but one example of the ambivalence which has characterized the human-animal relationship over the centuries, both across, and within, cultures, societies and traditions. The book examines the interpretations, functions and interactions of the Fall — physical, moral, artistic and otherwise — as represented through animals, or through human-animal interactions.