The orator and philosopher Michael Psellos (Constantinople, 1018-1078) is an emblematic figure in the history of learned Byzantine literature and one of the most widely read Greek writers of the Middle Ages. His impact is not coincidental. He wrote on almost everything, cultivating nearly all Byzantine literary forms and providing us not only with a unique glimpse into the eleventh-century Byzantium but also with a diversity of portraits that balance between idealization, irony, and sensitivity.
The figure that stands out in Psellos' portraits is undoubtedly that of himself, the author’s ego. The book attempts to deconstruct but also to reconstruct Psellos' self-referential discourse, identifying his obsessions and silences. How does he define the literary artist and self-presentation? How does he manage the relationship between text and persona? In what ways does he outline and realize his portrait?
What role does he assign to the body and emotions, to the self that fascinates but also suffers? In a broader context, what was the prestige of an orator like Psellos in Byzantine society? What was the audience and their expectations? What is the position of his texts in the history of rhetoric and self-presentation in Greek literary discourse, from the classics to the middle period of Byzantium?
What, in the end, was Byzantine rhetoric? And what is its relationship with what we understand as literature? In the proposed answers, emerges a literature that remains unknown and misunderstood, a discourse that may seem foreign, yet is so familiar.
