I, Anna Komnene
I, Anna Komnene is a novel by Bulgarian historian Vera Mutafchieva, a specialist in Ottoman studies and the daughter of historian Petar Mutafchiev.
The novel is a fictionalized biography of Anna Komnene, the Byzantine princess, scholar, physician, hospital administrator, and historian and author of the Alexiad.
Story
Romain is a modern Alexiad, edited by a modern woman from the 20th century. The novel has a feminist tone: the fate of the heroine, represented through the perspectives of the women around her, is typical of the so-called androcratic civilization, in which the male point of view and values are dominant. By trying, sometimes against her will, to deal with it, the woman undermines life's diversity and balance, because her calling is to be environmentally friendly, intuitive and tolerant, and to harmonize the world through motherhood and world-making.[1]
It is a self-contradictory work that combines and contrasts the apologetics of the first historian with the artificial feminism of the 20th century.
The novel combines and contrasts internal and historical unity – classicism and modernism. Anna Komnene is a maternal heir to the Cometopuli dynasty and in this sense is a child of dualism – between the classical Greco-Roman world and the Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria, who took the name of the Biblical prophet Samuel in an attempt to save the legacy of the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture.[2]
Mutafchieva stays close to the classic novel, rather than transitioning to journalism as many Bulgarian writers did after the revolutions of 1989.[3]
See also
References
- Аз, Анна Комнина (in Bulgarian)
- Аз, Анна Комнина / Вера Метафчиева (in Bulgarian)
- “Случаят Джем” и “Аз, Анна Комнина” от Вера Мутафчиева:от историята-герой към историята-повод (in Bulgarian)