Her Story in Partonopeu de Blois : Rereading Byzantine Relations

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates the twelfth-century Old French anonymous romance Partonopeu de Blois in relation to the Greek novel tradition and the Byzantine world. The study focuses on the erotic narrative in the romance and articulations of feminine subjectivity. If we read this text in relation to Byzantine literature, and the Greek novel tradition more generally, we could see new things in the courtly romance. Through the Byzantine relations, the romance constructs room for the female character to be a desiring subject. The two main Byzantine texts that are compared to Partonopeu de Blois are, first, Eumathios Makrembolites’ novel Hysmine and Hysminias, second, the historiographical work the Alexiad, by Anna Komnene, who was a Byzantine princess and historian. Another text of importance is Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche-tale, found in his Latin novel Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass. Other than these mentioned texts, other ones are discussed in minor scale, such as Theodore Prodromos’ Rhodanthe and Dosikles, Achilles Tatius’ Leukippe and Kleitophon, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe and Andreas Capellanus’ De Amore.The study is outlined in three analytical chapters, based on different themes: touch, gaze, and voice. In the first chapter, focus is put on erotic narratives. In the second chapter, focus is put on the inscription of a feminine desiring gaze into the rhetorical discourse. In the third chapter, focus is put on the voice, and how speaking is connected to power and desire in the narratives.If we consider twelfth-century Byzantine literature and the Greek novel into our reading of Partonopeu de Blois, we could see forms of feminine agency and power that remain obscure if we do not take them into account. Through this sort of fusion of literary influences, feminine subjectivity is articulated in Partonopeu de Blois, which, I demonstrate, should be seen in relation to feminine voices discernible in the Byzantine literary context as well.