The History of Autobiography and Byzantine Literature

2,007 views · Published 2 May 2012 · 38:21 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: Yale University · 2012 · Education

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This paper was delivered by Stratis Papaioannou at the Byzantine/Modernism Symposium in a panel entitled, "Byzantine Subjectivity in Modernity," which also included a paper by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak  and was chaired by Roland Betancourt. Professor Papaioannou's paper analyzes the (mis-)reading of Byzantine self-referential writing in Georg Misch's Geschichte der Autobiographie, the first volume of which appeared in 1907.  Misch's volumes purported to provide a universal history and genealogy of modern subjectivity, expanding traditions of thought that were to be continued as well as radically challenged by the various modernist movements.

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