Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, ed. Représenter et nommer la Grèce et les Grecs (XIVe–XVIe siècle). Brepols, 2023.

From Brepols

What do Greece and the Greeks represent for authors and artists of the 14th to 16th centuries in Western Europe? This volume explores this question from the perspective of spatial and geographic perception and imagination. It thus concerns the representations of Greek space, ancient and “modern” from the 14th to 16th century.

By favouring Latin, French and Italian works, written mainly in Italy, France, the Burgundian Netherlands and Greece, it studies how authors and artists represent textually and visually the geography of Greece / space or Greek spaces(s). The difficulties in defining, naming and representing Greece as a territorial entity were numerous during these centuries, marked by very profound upheavals, with the collapse of the Byzantine Empire on the Greek side and, on the Western European side, numerous developments in geographical, historical and also linguistic knowledge, as well as in textual and iconographic forms of expression. The perception of a spatial, geographical identity of Greece is all the more delicate as several temporalities are at stake: that of ancient Greece, that of Greece contemporary to the authors, and that of medieval Greece before the 14th century. The studies brought together question the different perceptions and representations of Greek space, in its unity and/or its diversity, which are expressed and renewed during these three centuries, as well as on the naming of Greek places and the Greece who accompany them.