ABSTRACT
The remaining three chapters in this section focus on material culture. Robert Ousterhout examines the physical and literary records of ninthcentury church architecture in Constantinople; Alessandra Ricci re-identifies the ruins long (and incorrectly) described as the remains of Theophilos' Bryas palace, also in the capital; and Robin Cormack looks to other regions, especially Thessalonike. The critical element missing from the chapters in this section is the representational art of Constantinople,1 a topic introduced at the Symposium itself by Kathleen Corrigan, whose insights on 'narrative' were arranged to balance Nancy Patterson Sevcenko's thoughts on 'nonnarrative' imagery. Corrigan's ideas will appear elsewhere as part of a larger study and unfortunately cannot be included in this volume. One of her basic points must, however, be repeated here. Using the ninth-century copy of the Christian Topography (Vat.gr.699) as her model, Corrigan showed how visual narrative transcended the bounds of textual narrative: as different word-stories unfolded over several pages, the images supplied a double layer of meaning by both responding to the words that they accompanied and at the same time creating another supplementary narrative that was conveyed purely by imagery.
