Crowds and Collective Affect in Romanos’s Biblical Retellings
Crowds and Collective Affect in Romanos’s Biblical Retellings
This chapter examines the role of internal groupings within the biblical episodes retold in Romanos the Melodist’s (ca. 555) hymns (or, kontakia). Performed for liturgical festivals, these sung sermons allowed congregations to sing along with various biblical groups, whether the three youths in the furnace, the magi, Herod’s army, the Ninevites, or Jesus’s disciples. Shaped by recent work on the collective voices in Greek tragedy, this essay considers how groups allowed congregations to share in the emotional world of the biblical characters, sing for those silenced by ignorance or cowardice, and sing to repent with sinners and repudiate villains.
Keywords: crowd, emotions, Holy Week, hymnography, laity, Lent, Romanos the Melodist
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