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In this meticulously researched study, Mirela Ivanova offers a new critical history of the invention of the Slavonic alphabet. Showing how the alphabet was not invented once, but rather continually contested and redefined in the century following its creation, Ivanova challenges the prevalent nationalist historiography that has built up around it.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- Abbreviations
- List of Figures
- Map
- Introduction
- Part One: Inventing Slavonic
- 1: Constantine-Cyril Today: A Critical Assessment
- 2: The Life of Constantine-Cyril: A New Reading
- 3: Learned Saints between Rome and Constantinople: The VC in Context
- Part Two: Institutionalising Slavonic
- 4: The Myth of Cyril and Methodios Revisited
- 5: Cyril, Slavonic, and the Pope in the Life of Methodios
- 6: Popes, Bishops, and Emperors between Rome and Constantinople
- Part Three: Defending Slavonic
- 7: Where Not to Start: Slavonic in Balkan History
- 8: A Case for Slavonic: The Earliest Defence of the Alphabet
- 9: Slavonic and Greek Bookmen in the Tenth-Century Balkans
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Mirela Ivanova is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield. Her research explores the intellectual and social history of Byzantium and Central and Eastern Europe in the early middle ages. Relatedly, she is interested in the historiography of medievalism and nation building in the Balkans, Russia and Turkey today. To this end she is co-editor of Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Towards a Critical Historiography (2023).
Summary
In this meticulously researched study, Mirela Ivanova offers a new critical history of the invention of the Slavonic alphabet. Showing how the alphabet was not invented once, but rather continually contested and redefined in the century following its creation, Ivanova challenges the prevalent nationalist historiography that has built up around it.
Additional text
The monograph is published by OUP in the Oxford Studies in Byzantium series. At this price point, the book will mainly be of interest to libraries and specialist academics.
