Humanities and Social Sciences Colloquium - Przemyslaw Marciniak

Between the Fall and the Conquest: the Last Days of Constantinople in Popular Culture

As Photis Kontoglou, the famous Greek painter and writer,  noted, even Homer was not gifted enough to describe the Fall of  Constantinople.  The year 1453 came to signify the end of the Middle Ages: the Fall was not only a huge disaster but became also a powerful symbol. The echoes of this disaster resounded into much later times and were used and reinterpreted for various purposes – both political and social -  throughout history. In my paper I intend to show how the narrative of the Fall (or the Conquest from the Turkish point of view) was constructed, interpreted and used  by authors of  speculative fiction, playwrights and later filmmakers.  The chronological scope of my investigation  is limited to the 19th -21st centuries (with one or two earlier exceptions)  – this is mostly prompted by the fact that the vast majority of my sources were created in this period.