Late Byzantium in the Works of Margarita A. Poljakovskaja

2020

Античная древность и средние века, Vol 48, Iss 0, Pp 11-23 (2020)

This paper commemorates Margarita Adol’fovna Poljakovskaja (1933–2020), the head of the Ural school of Byzantine studies and the respected authority in the history and culture of late Byzantium. The author makes the reader acquainted with Professor Poljakovskaja’s academic biography, the topics of her researches, and the results of her studies in various aspects of the Byzantine history from the thirteenth to fifteenth century. The paper has revealed a few key topics studied by Professor Poljakovskaja: monastic properties in late Byzantine cities; Byzantine rhetoric and epistolography; social and political thought; intellectual life; social structures in the Byzantine society; palace ceremonies and court culture; and the Byzantines’ emotional world and daily life. It has been stated that although Professor Poljakovskaja used abundant and varied methodology produced by historical and philological researches, she preferred the anthropological approach. Her attention concentrated on a person and the person’s notion of the time and self. Reconstructions of intellectual and social life in the period of decline of the Byzantine empire loomed large in the historian’s studies, and the key topic of her researches was the problem of the “person, society, and power”.

article

German
English
Russian

Ural Federal University, 2020.

м. а. поляковская, уральская школа византиноведения, поздняя византия, византийские интеллектуалы, церемониал, византийская риторика, Ancient history, D51-90, Medieval history, D111-203