CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Rothstein-Dowden, Zachary |
|---|---|
| Title | UNRAVELING THE CORD: THE SCHEDOGRAPHY OF NIKEPHOROS BASILAKES |
| Summary | This thesis examines a difficult passage in the Prologos of Nikephoros Basilakes in which the author speaks of a kind of schedography that he credits as being his own invention. It begins with a short biography of the author. It then attempts to trace the evolution of schedic performances from their beginnings in the eleventh century through to the time of Basilakes in the mid-twelfth century. The argument is that schedē began as epimerismoi, analytical exercises, which, unlike the latter, were performed competitively in front of an audience. These exercises focused on testing knowledge of both vocabulary and orthography. Soon the orthographic, that is to say antistoichic, element took firmer hold, and exercises became more complex. By the end of the century some schedē were no longer performance pieces, but visual puzzles for students, where word boundaries had to be reassigned and graphemes adjusted to give the correct reading. Frequently these exercises hinged on vernacularisms. Basilakes seems to have taken these word games to a new level, creating elaborate puns that used exclusively Atticist Greek. |
| Supervisor | Gaul, Niels |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/rothstein-dowden_zachary.pdf |
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