Digenes Akrites1993
new approaches to Byzantine heroic poetry
by Roderick Beaton
Called variously the 'Byzantine epic', the 'epic of Modern Greece', an 'epic-romance' and a 'romance', the poem of Digenes Akrites has, since its rediscovery towards the end of the nineteenth century, exerted a tenacious hold on the imagination of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and from many countries of the world, as well as of writers and public figures in Greece.
There are many reasons for this, not least among them the prestige accorded to 'national epics' in the nineteenth century and for some time afterwards. Another reason must surely be the work's uniqueness: there is nothing quite like Digenes Akrites in either Byzantine or Modern Greek literature. However, this uniqueness is not confined to its problematic place in the literary 'canon' and literary history.
As...