Autobiographische Traditionen in Byzanz

In the present study autobiography is defined as a retrospective narrative about the author's self. A corpus of about 80 autobiographical texts of different length and literary quality from the 5th to the 15th century is identified, and features common to all kinds of autobiographical writing in Byzantium are investigated, like the author's alleged reluctance to speak about himself. Special emphasis is given to the tradition of self-representation in hagiography, monastic typika, testaments, historiography, the preface to an author's collected works and apologies as well as to the underlying autobiographical patterns in these categories of texts.