Study On The Heroism In Digenis Akrites

Digenis Akrites is called “proto-romance” by Western scholars,an epic which was widely spread in Byzantine and the Eastern Orthodox world.It reflects the heroism and values of the Byzantine people in the Middle Ages with the stories of the two generations of the Emir and his son Basil.They all have the general characteristics of noble birth,bravery,wisdom,and heroic invincibility,yet they all reflect the characteristics of the Byzantine hero’s emphasis on spiritual prosperity.In particular,the protagonist Digenis Akrites’ growth experience reflects the influence of Byzantine’s multi-cultural features on him.This dissertation consists of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction firstly elaborates on the significance of the topic,the perspective of research,and the status quo of Byzantine research both domestically and abroad.As the study of Byzantine literature in China started late and many Chinese scholars are not familiar with this epic,the dissertation offers explained some important background knowledge of it in the second part of the introduction,including a brief introduction to the seven versions of the existing epic manuscripts,the historical background of the epic creation,the summary of epic stories and a review of the academic history of the study of Digenis Akrites.Since this dissertation mainly refers to Grottaferrata and Escorial manuscripts,in the epic story summary section the author makes a more detailed comparison between the two versions concerning their content and structure.The main body is divided into five chapters.The first chapter defines the hero and heroic behavior and goes deep into the basic connotation of Byzantine heroism.In the first section of this chapter,the author sums up the framework of social values in the world of Digenis Akrites based on a close reading of the text and tries to identify:(a)The qualities in which honour consists;(b)The means by which honour is manifested,acquired,increased,preserved,or lost;(c)The social groups on whose behalf or at whose expense honour is defended and pursued;(d)The social group that seeks the honor of heroism.Compared with the heroic adventure stories of ancient Greece,the Byzantine epic emphasizes the strength and perfection of the hero’s spiritual power.In the second section of this chapter,the author focuses on the important role played by Christianity,the knightly symbolism,and the hagiography in the process of heroes’ spiritual growth.Due to his obvious unheroic death,Digenis’ hero identity is often questioned by western scholars.Therefore,at the end of the second section,the author makes a reasonable explanation of the death of Digenis according to the principles of the Bible interpretation..A culture’s definition of “hero” reflects the requirements and expectations of its social ideal model,and reflects the national heroism and values of an era.The cognition of heroes and the social psychology of this era are also reflected in literary works,and they have been transformed and solidified through concrete characters.Therefore,literary works must demonstrate the heroism they want to embody through the various heroic images that have been molded.The charm of Digenis Akrites lies in that the epic has created a complex,contradictory,multi-dimensional heroic image.Even Digenes himself had been confused about his own heroic behavior and sought answers from passing strangers.(Please refer to the initial part of the fifth volume)Of course,this can also be understood as the soul searching of the 12 th century Byzantines after they lost the vast eastern part of Anatolia and their desire for the future.In the second,third,fourth and fifth chapters of this dissertation,the author analyzes the Byzantine hero’s behavior and life attitude from four different perspectives: family role,gender identity,relationship with the emperor,and the religious belief,trying to display a full range of unique images of Byzantine heroes and summarize the definition of heroism that can reflect the Byzantine national cultural psychology.Medieval Greek writers of biography and encomium,like their ancient models,conventionally began by extolling their subject’s γενοδ(birth,kin or ancestry)and πατριδ(native land or city)as the two basic coordinates of a social existence,which both conferred an honourable start in life,and gained glory from a life honorably lived.This was not just a rhetorical convention.For the characters of Digenis Akrites,family is of great importance in determining their identity.In the second chapter,the author first analyzes the differences and connections between Byzantine three concepts “patris”,“genos” and “eugeneia”,and points out that the pursuit of family honor is a great motivation for the hero to build a career and make achievements.Second,the author analyzes in detail the different social roles of the two major types of Byzantine families(the extended family and the nuclear family)and the deep-seated reasons why two generations of heroes choose different kinds of family lives.In order to deepen the study of this dissertation,the author quotes some examples from Precepts and Tales of Kekaumenos for the first time in this chapter.Through the comparative analysis of the two works,readers can get a more comprehensive view of the Byzantine family and the basic operation mode of the society.The emphasis in this chapter is on exploiting the difference between Digenis and his father Emir,the subject which is discussed in the second section.Here,the author compares the father and son in the framework of kin group,family and marriage;the purpose is to explore how the difference between Digenis and his father helps establish the hero’s identity and status in the Grottaferrata manuscript.The epic is built around a set of binary oppositions which express a number of formal or “structural” conflicts.The internal coherence and social significance of the poem is most clearly seen through these oppositions.Further,the action itself is seen,at this level,to occur often not simply as an illustration of,but because of certain oppositions——the conflict they express seeks self-justification in the action which it generates(and which action itself reflects the conflict).In other words,the reason for heroic behavior can be found in the interaction between him and the characters in opposition.The most obvious oppositions in the epic are the tension between the border nobility and the emperor;the male and the female;Christianity and Islam(Byzantine and Muslim).The analysis of these oppositions is also the focus of the following three chapters.The third chapter of this dissertation firstly sorts out the “Akritic” epic about women since ancient Greece and Rome,and defines the characteristics of traditional female images from four perspectives.In the second and third sections of this chapter,the author summarizes the basic characteristics of Byzantine women by listing a large number of examples from the epic,and focuses on analyzing the characteristics of the two “abnormal” female and their influence on the hero’s honor.It is worth noting that the issue of gender relations in Digenis Akrites is also the subject which has aroused great controversies among the western scholars.Therefore,in the last section of the third chapter,based on epic theme,the author explores the tension between male heroes and females,and the special outlook,which it reflects on heroism embodied in the Byzantine patriarchal hierarchy.From the epic protagonist’s name,it can be inferred that this is a work describing the hero of the frontier,because the meaning of the English word “Akritic” is “of frontiersmen”,hence,the hero’s honor in the epic depends to a large extent on his identity as the defender of the border and the Byzantine imperial power.The fourth chapter first briefly introduces the basic characteristics of Byzantine imperial power,and based on this,elaborates in detail on how the emperor strengthened his centralized rule by pacifying and rewarding the military leaders and ordinary people of the other nations,such as Arabs.At the same time,the epic also reveals a profoundly contradictory attitude of the border nobility to the nominal emperor.The concrete example is that in the face of the emperor who came to visit,the protagonist Digenis showed a surprising heroic behavior.In the second section of this chapter,the author analyzes in depth the causes,manifestations,and the solutions the rulers adopted under this circumstance.Undoubtedly,the epic of Digenis Akrites has a special importance in the Byzantine literature,which is derived from its unique subject about the Byzantino-Islamic conflict on the Eastern common frontiers or the traditional conflict between Islam and Christianity in the middle ages,and one of the important reasons why it has attracted many western readers so far is that it expresses the exchange and integration between the two world religions.Digenis’ extraordinary birth is in his “διγνεια”,born of an Arab father(converted to Christianity)and a Christian mother.In the first section of the fifth chapter,the author first analyzes in detail the cultural implication behind the hero Digenis’ dual national and religious identity.Second,the author elaborates the ways and means of realizing religious reconciliation in the eyes of the Byzantine scholars,based on a large number of examples in epic and other contemporary literary manuscripts.In the second section of this chapter,the author specifically analyzes two crucial roles played by Christianity in the formation of heroes in Digenis Akrites.Finally,the author proposes that the behavior of the heroes in the epic embodies a new type of religious concept,the“Humanistic Religious View”,and in depth analyzes the specific connotation of this religious concept and its influence on the Byzantine concept of a hero.In short,only from the point of view of cultural development and origin,we are able to explore the trajectory and context of a country,a nation,and a civilization.Only then can we give a practical revelation from the theoretical and practical aspects to the present.This dissertation explores the origin and development of the medieval Byzantine cultural spirit from the perspective of the heroic view of Digenis Akrites,and concludes that the heroic image of the poet is a cultural symbol.Digenis is a symbol of the immortal spirit from ancient to modern Greek.