A Byzantine Journey
by John Ash
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A high point of civilization and artistic accomplishment, the Byzantine Empire has also been the object of great misunderstanding and prejudice. This is a portrayal of its cultural history focusing on its surreal landscapes and fantastic monuments.Tags
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A high point of civilization and artistic accomplishment, the Byzantine Empire has also been the object of great misunderstanding and prejudice. This is a portrayal of its cultural history focusing on its surreal landscapes and fantastic monuments. The book starts in Istanbul and crosses the Sea of Marmara to travel through Anatolia, the region of Asiatic Turkey which was the source of the Empire's wealth and manpower. John Ash finds his way through a country of anachronisms and contrasts, of bloody feuds and frescoed cave-churches, of saints and sinners, of emperors and sultans. The book introduces the reader to an exotic cast of characters, including the impassioned aesthete Theophilus, the great mystical poet Rumi, the bishop and show more necromancer Theodore Santabarenos and the Empress Theophano. show less
John Ash goes in seacrch of Byzantium in modern day Turkey.
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14+ Works 187 Members
At the centre of this collection are John Ash's versions of poems by the great Alexandrian C.P. Cavafy. Working with Cavafy's voice, Ash expresses his own urbane intelligence.
Common Knowledge
- Epigraph
- In the battles between truth and prejudice, waged on the field of history books, it must be confessed that the latter usually wins. . . . At the hands of such prejudice many historical epochs have suffered, and most of all th... (show all)e epoch known as the Later Roman or Byzantine Empire. Ever since our rough crusading forefathers first saw Constantinople and met, to their contemptuous disgust, a society where everyone read and wrote, ate food with forks and preferred diplomacy to war, it has been fashionable to pass the Byzantines by with scorn and to use their name as synonymous with decadence. -- Steven Runciman
- Dedication
- This book is dedicated to the people of Anatolia
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- Languages
- English
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- Paper
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
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