The conference aims to examine the persistence of ancient novelistic material in hagiography and instances of continuity of novelistic and/or hagiographical strands in medieval romances in the West, Byzantium and Persia. Troughout the three-day programme, intersections are explored between different narrative traditions:
- Ancient novelistic fiction (broadly defined), including Greek novels (both extant and fragmentarily preserved, Latin novels, Jewish novels and so-called ‘fringe novels’ or ‘novelistic biographies’
- Hagiography from the fourth to the twelfth century, including Lives, Martyr Acts, hagiographical romances, and edifying tales written in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopian and Coptic
- Medieval romance in the West, Byzantium or Persia.