This volume offers the first fully scholarly translation into English of the Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, a love romance written around the middle of 13th century at the imperial court of Nicaea, at the time when Constantinople was still under Latin dominion. With its approximately 4700 verses, Livistros and Rodamne is the longest and the most artfully composed of the eight surviving Byzantine love romances. It was almost certainly written to be recited in front of an aristocratic audience by an educated poet experienced in the Greek tradition of erotic fiction, yet at the same time knowledgeable of the Medieval French and Persian romances of love and adventure. The poet has created a very 'modern' narrative filled with attractive episodes, including the only scene of demonic incantation in Byzantine fiction. The language of the romance is of a high poetic quality, challenging the translator at every step. Finally, Livistros and Rodamne is the only Byzantine romance that consistently constructs the Latin world of chivalry as an exotic setting, a type of occidentalism aiming to tame and to incorporate the Frankish Other in the social norms of the Byzantine Self after the Fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204.

Preface Introduction I. General issues 1. The genre of Byzantine romance 2. L&R in older scholarship 3. Textual history and editorial situation 4. Date, place of composition, primary audience II. Literary matters 1. A brief summary of L&R 2. Relation to the Komnenian and Ancient Greek novels 3. Relation to the Old French romances 4. Byzantine occidentalism? Exoticism in L&R 5. The 'awe-inspiring mysteries' of a poet's art 6. Narrative and the organization of time 7. Narrative space and narrated spaces 8. L&R as an instruction manual on the 'art of love' 9. Eros, hybrid power and the politics of desire 10. Poetic language and the blended style in L&R III. The translation The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne Bibliography