Sailing to Where? The Polysemic World of "Byzantium" and Its (Mis?)Perceptions

Bhalla, Niamh and Kotoula, Dimitra (2026) Sailing to Where? The Polysemic World of "Byzantium" and Its (Mis?)Perceptions. In: The Routledge Handbook of the Modern Reception of Byzantium. Routledge, London and New York, pp. 3-32. ISBN 9781032077802

Abstract

This chapter outlines how “Byzantium” – a retrospective exonym for the medieval Roman Empire – has been continuously invented and reimagined from the nineteenth century to the present. It begins by charting Byzantium before “Byzantium”: the religious, territorial and linguistic diversity of this millennium-long empire, whose historical complexity would later be selectively compressed into imagined essences. The chapter then traces how “Byzantium” was created as a category in the modern period, giving birth to countless Byzantinisms built upon the empire’s perceived pillars— – its Romanness, its Greekness, its Orthodoxy, its visual culture, and other now-forgotten foundations. The introduction chapter explores the periodisation of Byzantine reception and maps how the Handbook’s case studies reveal Byzantium as a polysemic signifier laden with contradictory meanings: from decadence and bureaucratic complexity to spiritual purity and utopian possibility. It outlines how proximity and distance – geographical and conceptual – have shaped and continue to shape divergent responses from China to the United States and everywhere in between. The authors preview, interpret and define this ground-breaking volume’s thematic strands: from spiritual revival and the politics of the sacred image to the Neo-Byzantine as a creative, generative, and disruptive force across architecture, literature, film, painting, fashion, video games, political ideology and much more. Ultimately, the authors argue that modern receptions tell us less about the historical empire than about ourselves – our anxieties, aspirations, and ongoing negotiations with power, identity and heritage.

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