Aristocracy and Literary Production in the Tenth Century

Taking as its starting point the figure and work of John Geometra, a poet active in 10th-century Constantinople, the article examines two interrelated phenomena. On the one hand, the author questions whether a literary production of aristocratic and provincial inspiration existed in Byzantium during the period under examination, and proposes to identify traces of it in the Byzantine literature that has come down to us. On the other hand, the research intends to reconstruct how the Constantinopolitan cultural elite active at the Macedonian court was able to translate the ambitions and traditions of this rising social group, expressing them in the language of the 'high' classicizing literature.