This course provides an introduction to the language of late antique and Byzantine Greek texts. This “Medieval Greek” should not be understood as a particular, “intermediate” stage in a supposedly linear development from Ancient to Modern Greek, but rather as a conventional designation of a broad continuum of linguistic registers, ranging from highly archaizing usages (“Atticism”) to the so-called vernacular. In the surviving texts, these registers may vary significantly, depending on the author and
his (or rarely, her) audience, the genre and other contextual factors. Through a close reading of representative literary and “sub-literary” texts from various periods and genres, the course intends to give students a first impression of this diversity and multi-layerdness of Greek writing in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Although the main focus will be on grammatical and lexical analysis, we will also discuss related aspects of composition and style.