ByzantinoslavicaRevue internationale des études byzantines

Datum publikování: 2025

Autor: Laguna López, Alejandro

Abstrakt: Niketas Eugenianos’ Drosilla & Charikles is one of the four Komnenian novels produced in twelfth-century Constantinople. In this erotic fictional narrative following the traditional novelistic plot, the two lovers get separated once and again by Fate before finally managing to reunite. The female protagonist, Drosilla, is pursued by a series of suitors who explicitly compare her to nature and to diverse characters from the mythological and literary tradition. Drosilla has little to no agency, no say over her own destiny. Nonetheless, she is aware of the literary tradition to which her story is ascribed and of the expectations put on her. Just as male characters compare her to other women, she also defines herself in relation to them. Existing scholarship has already identified the literary models used by Eugenianos for the composition of this novel, and recent ecocritical studies have tackled some aspects of female characterization in medieval Greek novels, but Drosilla & Charikles has so far received only partial attention in this regard. The author of the present article explores Drosilla as a character analysing the hypotexts and natural elements used by male characters for her portrayal, which reveal the contemporary perception of femininity.

Rozsah stran: s. 145–161

Status recenzování: recenzovaný článek

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0