Greece reinvented: transformations of Byzantine Hellenism in Renaissance Italy

In: Brill's studies in intellectual history 247

Abstract

"In Greece Reinvented Han Lamers explores the transformations of Byzantine Hellenism in Renaissance Italy. Relinquishing their traditional Roman inheritance, the Byzantine intelligentsia in Italy generally portrayed themselves as 'children of the Hellenes'. On the basis of sources in Greek, Latin, and Italian, and at the crossroads of cultural, literary, and intellectual history, Greece Reinvented shows in what ways Greek exiles such as Bessarion, George Trapezuntius, Ianus Lascaris, Michele Marullo, and others redefined what it meant to be Greek in the Italian diaspora. Placing their renewed 'Greekness' in the context of the cultural exchange between Greeks and Latins, Greece Reinvented reveals the cultural dynamics behind the much-studied transfer of Greek learning from Byzantium to the Latin West"--