ABSTRACT

This paper explores three concepts: self, experience and presentation, and their expression in three middle-Byzantine historians who span the eleventh and twelfth centuries namely Michael Psellos, Anna Komnene and Niketas Choniates. Discussions of Byzantine historiography begin with two articles by Ruth Macrides. Macrides unites two apparently conflicting views of Byzantine history writing. Reading historical sources as literature can best be understood in terms of Roman Jakobson's analysis of the speech event. Macrides advocates the reading of historical sources as literature to determine and understand how the Byzantines wrote about their past. In her analysis of Psellos' Chronographia, Efthymia Pietsch asserts that it is composed of three strands: imperial history, autobiography and apology. Anna Komnene draws attention to the fact that her own birth had been associated with a miraculous event. The experiencing self is present because of the role of classical historiography in the writing of Byzantine history.