From Schools to Practice. The language of the epistolary of Demetrios Kydones
After completing both my bachelor’s degree in Classics (University of Catania, 2016) and master’s degree in Classical Philology (Catholic University of Milan, 2019), I moved to Messina and got my PhD in Humanistic Sciences (2022). My research interests are in diachronic and comparative studies of the Greek language from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. I analyzed the translation techniques of two Medieval Greek metaphrases – the Vita Sancti Benedicti of Gregory the Great translated by pope Zacharias, and the anonymous version of the Rule of Saint Francis – in their stylistic, lexical, and morpho-syntactic characteristics.
At MELA, I will focus on the letters collection of Demetrios Kydones, an author who was remarkably adherent to forms and norms of the then-current ‘Attic’. In my research, I aim to: (a) verify whether his prose was immune to other lower-register varieties of Medieval Greek; (b) the reasons and nature of those – if any – intrusions of other varieties of Medieval Greek in Kydones’ Atticized writings.