Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian

Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture

by Leonora Neville

Byzantine princess Anna Komnene is known for two plotting to murder her brother to usurp the throne, and writing the Alexiad, an epic history of her father Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118) that is a key historical source for the era of the First Crusade. Anna the Life and Work of a Medieval Historian investigates the relationship between Anna's self-presentation in the Alexiad and the story of her bloodthirsty ambition. It begins by asking why women did not write history in Anna's society, what cultural rules Anna broke by doing so, and how Anna tried to respond to those challenges in her writing. Many of the idiosyncrasies and surprises of Anna's Alexiad are driven by her efforts to be perceived as both a good historian and a good woman. These new interpretations of Anna's authorial persona then spark a thorough re-thinking of the standard story which defines Anna's life by the failure of her supposed political ambitions. The second half of this work reviews the
medieval sources with fresh eyes and re-establishes Anna's primary identity as an author and intellectual rather than as a failed conspirator.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction

254 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Leonora Neville is the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Professor of Byzantine History at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

Reviews

[grosbeak · Rating 4 out of 5]

The style is somewhat repetitive and sometimes verges into something close to condescending, but this is a really important book, and I'm glad it was written to be somewhat accessible to a general audience. Neville's most significant contribution is her reading of the Alexiad's narrative voice as a gendered voice, in the context of historiographical conventions, rhetorical practice, and – most importantly for this work compared to others – Byzantine and Classical gender expectations. She underlines what an extraordinary (and unprecedented) move it was for a woman to write a Thucydidean-style political and military history, and the extra challenges of authorial self-representation that Anna had to negotiated in order to portray herself as both a "good historiographer" and a "good woman."

Neville perhaps unnecessarily downplays Anna's possible agency and ambitions in what does seem to have been a contentious and murky moment of succession after Alexios' death, although they were elided from the official narrative. It's right to underline the rhetorical and moral emphases that condition the histories that portray Anna and her mother Eirene in the most conspiratorial "bad woman" light, and to point to the continued place of Anna and her husband Bryennus in the subsequent regimes: so pretty clearly they could not have been implicated very seriously in any attempted coup, and Anna did not write her history from forced monastic seclusion after years of bitterness. But it's also obvious why the contemporary encomiasts and courtiers of the Comnenian dynasty would ignore or elide dissension within the imperial family and, as Neville shows, their representations of Anna and her family by definition only show a certain side of court life. Still, this is a vital corrective to several centuries of uncritical parroting of a very tenuously-supported Angry Evil Woman narrative.

Sometimes Neville seems to swing too far towards taking Anna at the word of her self-presentation as nothing more than a pious and dutiful daughter and an entirely disinterested intellectual–a presentation that she herself points out is highly rhetorical and instrumental rather than confessional. Historiography was often a way of "doing politics by other means" and whether or not Anna wanted or tried to seize the throne, we should probably be open to the likelihood that, in writing history, she desired to influence not just future memory but also the present actions and policies of her readers.

[Anatolikon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neville has two goals in this book: to examine how Anna functioned as a woman writing Greek historiography, a traditionally male genre, and she attempts to revise Anna’s biography. She succeeds admirably in both these efforts. The first half of the book deals with Anna as a woman and a writer of history. Being a woman posed all sorts of problems for writing history in Byzantium. Historians were supposed to be familiar with their subjects, or to know those who participated in them. While Anna occasionally hints that she went on military campaigns, this is not a what a good woman would do in Byzantium, where it was ideal that they were seen as little as possible and stayed at home. Hence Anna has a problem: she wants to be seen as a good woman and a good historian. Neville suggests that Anna does this by using the emotions of her audience. She stresses the tragedy of her life, the death of Alexios, and her widowhood following the death of Nikephoros. This gave Anna the opportunity to fulfill the role of a good woman, that of the widow, while continuing to write history.

The second part of the book targets the history of Anna following Alexios’s death and the supposed coup against John. Neville goes through the evidence and argues that only Niketas Choniates mentions her attempted coup, and that he does so in the context of showing the Komnenian family as torn from strife within. The other evidence indicates no separation between Anna and Nikephoros, and that the passage in the Alexiad supposedly alluding to Anna’s monastic confinement is actually about filial piety. Neville thus throws down one of the standard textbook “facts” of Byzantine history, that Anna Komnene attempted to overthrow her brother. Tying the two halves of the book together, Neville suggests that Choniates did not approve of a woman writing historiography, and used this to slander the house of Komnenos.

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hoop dat mijn medestudenten goed hebben gescoord op het mondeling 🙏 op zich wel leuk boek. In het algemeen was de close reading van dit boek wel leuk en de eigen interpretatie die Neville probeert te creëren bij de lezer is ook mooi gedaan (hoewel je dit ook zou kunnen interpreteren als een historicus die haar verantwoordelijkheid ontloopt, natuurlijk)

[Eileen Iciek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history of the great medieval historian, Anna Komnene. I have been skeptical of "gender" studies, but in this context I found it useful in gaining an understanding of the cultural environment in which Anna lived.

The last few chapters dealt with whether or not Anna really opposed her brother taking the throne, or if she was ok with it. The author believes that Anna was ok with it and that earlier historians (including near contemporaries) were not correct in stating that Anna made failed attempts to gain it for herself. My own opinion is that Anna may have made abortive efforts, but I suspect her mother, Eirene, had more responsibility for them than is in the historical record. Eirene is a curious figure in medieval history - the only woman of that era I am aware of who preferred her daughter's succeeding her husband rather than her son (and she had several sons). I have not read of any historian who tried to understand Eirene's motivations, but it would be an interesting story.

[Moniek Bloks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna Komnene was a Byzantine princess, the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos and his wife Irene Doukaina. She was born in the purple – meaning during her father’s reign and in the Porphyra Chamber of the imperial palace in Constantinople, making her a porphyrogenita. She is perhaps best known for her attempt to usurp her brother, John II Komnenos. As a result, Anna was exiled to a monastery where she would spend the rest of her life. While imprisoned, she wrote the Alexiad, an account of her father’s reign.

Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian by Leonora Neville tells the story not only of Anna Komnene herself but also about her work as a historian and the balance she had to find between her work and the impression she would make as a woman writing it. The story is very well written, though it is perhaps a bit repetitive and longwinded at times. You can tell that a lot of research has gone into this and I was impressed by how Anna was brought to life.

Don’t let the price of the hardcover scare you away, fortunately, the paperback is a lot more affordable. Overall, I would recommend this book for a look at a woman who dared to write outside the box.

[Edward Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very convincing argument that a single politically motivated source written long after Anna's death has skewed historians' perceptions of Anna and the history she wrote.

The author uses modern techniques to assess some of the stranger sections of the Alexiad and comes away thinking that Anna was trying to convince her contemporary audience that, despite being a woman, her history was reliable and she wasn't being ambitious. Because early modern historians didn't understand what she was saying they have constructed a narrative that she was so ambitious that she tried to take power, assassinate her brother and was confined to a monastery at the end of her life as a result. People love a narrative about a scheming woman running politics from behind the scenes! The author convincingly shows that this not only wasn't mentioned by her contemporaries, but doesn't fit what they were saying about her.

Sad that if people know about her today they have heard that she was under house arrest when she wrote her history, but she seems to have been remembered in her day for her contributions to philosophy.

I deducted a star because the academic style is very dry and repetitive. I understand why it's written like that but it isn't fun to read.

[Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 - I thought reading this before picking up the Alexiad myself would be a good idea. The author makes a few excellent points which make the reader more aware of the cultural interpretations of Anna's work. Although the style is sometimes a bit repetitive/popular, I really enjoyed it.

[Naomi Nemickas]

Really fascinating. Especially enjoyed ch. 8 about the how associating with monastic life enabled Anna to develop and maintain long-term relationships with male intellectuals and shield her from accusations of sexual impropriety

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was okay. Much of the book discussed the historical approach taken by Komnene as a writer. I was hoping for more tales of palace intrigue.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book was a really interesting dive into some historiography around Anna Komnene, analyzing what sources talk about her and how Anna's gender informed some of her authorial choices. It's well-written and I found the argument fairly convincing and well-done.

The main issue with the book is that it honestly became fairly repetitive at times (since Neville seemed to repeat the same arguments over-and-over in different chapters). Different chapters of this book cover different topics, but there's enough overlap that this creates considerable redundancy (I'd bet the book could be 60% of its length without losing much information).

[Lasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful piece of academic work this is. Neville offers a new and refreshing take on Anna Komnene as an author whilst also convincingly refuting decades and centuries-old arguments that form the core of contemporary portrayal and understanding of Anna. Neville draws upon academics' increased efforts in the last few decades to gain an improved understanding of Byzantine literary conventions to demonstrate that the persona of herself that Anna projects in the Alexiad is likely to a large degree purposely constructed in such a way as to make the notion of a female historian (history-writing was viewed as an exclusively male activity in 12th-century Byzantium, unlike some other genres of writing) palatable and morally acceptable to her predominantly male audience.

This work is very important, as it both expands on the field of gender studies within the context of Byzantine and medieval European studies and challenges long-held beliefs by the academic establishment; beliefs that, after having read this work, seem heavily rooted in ignorance and misogyny and do not stand up to modern standards of academic research.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading this book 50 pages in. I love Byzantine history but this book was dry as a bone.