Enunciation

Observations and context

Anna Comnena (12th century) was surrounded by a family circle of great women such as Irene Ducas (mother), Maria of Bulgaria (maternal grandmother), Anna Dalasena (paternal grandmother), and Maria of Alania (mother-in-law), who taught her everything she needed to know to stand out in the world of power and knowledge, thinking that she would be the empress of the great Byzantine Empire, a goal for which she fought all her life, without achieving it.

However, many other women achieved this rank and enjoyed immense political power, such as Theodora, the co-regent empress with Justinian, defender of women's rights (6th century); Irene, the first Byzantine empress to occupy the throne on her own (8th century) or Zoe, co-ruler with three different emperors and, for a short time, with her sister Theodora Porphyrogenet (11th century).

Aristocratic and imperial women also played an important role in Byzantine culture through their artistic patronage, some of them being writers: Anicia Juliana (5th-6th c.) sponsored the construction and decoration of the church of San Polieucto; Anna Comnena, besides being the author of the historical work the Alexiad, sponsored other scholars such as Eustratius of Nicaea; her contemporary Irene Sevastokratorissa commissioned the famous historian Constantine Manasses to write the text Synopsis Chronike, an account of the history of the world; the religious poet Cassia (9th c.) was one of the first female composers from whose works we preserve notated transcriptions, and Theodora Raulena (13th c.) wrote the Life of the iconodule brothers Theodore and Theophanes Grapti.

In the 12th century, outside the Byzantine sphere, we find innumerable women who excelled in different fields: the polymath Hildegard of Bingen, the philosopher Eloise of Paraclete, the writer of the Lais Mary of France, the troubadour Countess of Dia, the great scientist Trotula of Salerno or Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, among others.

The activity is proposed for the 3rd of ESO in the block The survival of classical languages. Language and lexis, but it could also be carried out in 4th of ESO, including listening to the poem in Modern Greek.

Description

Introduction to the stages of the Greek language, practice of the Greek alphabet in an excerpt from Anna Comnena's Alexiad and commentary on a poem by Constantine Cavafis.

Answer

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