Generic subversion? the political ideology of urban myth and apocalyptic prophecy

Abstract

The Edinburgh Conference coincided with the Birmingham graduate seminar on literary theory. A judicious selection, carefully annotated, would provide an excellent starting point for all Byzantinists. Neo-hellenists were at that time anxious to align themselves with Europe and to follow its critical trends. Byzantinists had to confront linguistic and textual difficulties, with fewer reliable translations than we possess today, and in unfamiliar historical contexts, leaving little time for 'literary theory'. New courses in Combined Honours were introduced, and among our first Birmingham students with Byzantine interests were John Haldon, Margaret Mullett, and Paul Tuffin, whose needs had to be coped with in small but heterogeneous graduate or undergraduate groups at different levels of linguistic competence. The theoretical readings were useful only up to a point: since most celebrated exponents were experts primarily in the fields of modern Western European literature, philosophy, psychology, there was little room for different concepts of what other literatures, ancient, medieval, or non-Western, might entail.