An Early Byzantine Topic in the Twentieth-Century Fiction

Abstract

The article presents the comparison of the images of main heroes, of the principles of writers’ characteristics, of the philosophical and historical-theoretical approaches to them in the novels and dramas at the end of nineteenth – early twentieth century. There are compared the works by Dmitrii Merezhkovsky, Valerii Brjusov, Henrik Johan Ibsen, Jacques Benoist-Méchen. The variety in approaches to the image of Emperor Julian Apostata is dictated by the complicacy and contradictoriness as of the historical hero himself,so of the time of action, namely the transitional period from paganism to Christianity, from Roman to Byzantine Empire, from antiquity to early Middle Ages.

Keywords

• ранневизантийский период, юлиан отступник, исторический роман, драматургия, переходная эпоха