“A Hand of Ivory”: Moving Objects in Psellos’ Oration for his Daughter Styliane. A Case Study

When at the end of the 9th century the Syrian prisoner Harun Ibn Yahya visited Constantinople, he had the opportunity to witness the Emperor's procession from the palace to the Great Church. The spectacle leaves an enduring impression on him. The pages of his travelogue convey his wonder at the material and affective aspects of the ceremony. His memoir, included in a geographical compilation called the Book of Precious Things by an early 10th-century Persian writer and geographer Ibn-Rosteh (Ducène, 2005; Haldon, 1978; Berger, 2001, pp. 77–78; Simeonova, 1998), testifies to his amazement before the many objects populating the processions:

Then comes an old man holding in his hands a golden washbasin and a golden jug adorned with pearls and rubies. Then comes the Emperor wearing his festival clothes, that is, silk clothes woven with jewels; on his head there is a crown; … on the hand of the Emperor there is a golden box in which there is a bit of earth. He goes on foot. Whenever he makes two paces, the minister says in their own language: “Μέμνησθε τοῦ θανάτου,” which means in translation, “Remember the death!” When the minister says this to him, the Emperor pauses, opens the box, looks at the earth, kisses it and weeps. He proceeds in this way until he reaches the gate of the church. (Vasilyev, 1932, p. 160)

Objects dictate the pace of the procession with the box carried by the emperor playing a central role. It is the ceremonial equivalent of the akakia, a pouch of purple silk filled with earth that was part of the sovereign's apparel and pointed symbolically, through the contrast between container and content, to the fragility of earthly power (Macrides, 2018). The golden casket has the same powerful function and creates a rhythm between physical movement—the advance of the cortege—and emotional movement—the emperor's engagement with and by the object. Contrast is key: not only the paradoxical materiality of the box—gold encapsulating earth—but also the alternation of movement and motionlessness. Physical movement is paused when the activation of the affective sphere intervenes. Being moved means ceasing to move.

The scene described by Harun Ibn Yahya testifies to the importance of considering affect and objects together when studying (displays of) emotions in the pre-modern world. The interaction of objects and emotions speaks both to current approaches to the humanities based on embodied, and, more specifically, distributed cognition and to a more phenomenologically oriented interest in materiality. The present paper interrogates Byzantine texts to answer a series of questions: “How do objects do” and more specifically “how and why do objects move us?” And, finally, is being moved, as a discrete emotion, part of the picture?

In a 2014 paper, Cova and Deonna first argued that the expression “being moved,” common in English refers to a distinct kind of emotion, indicating that it in fact meets the five criteria usually required for an affective episode to be labeled as a discrete emotion, that is “all of its instances (i) are intentional states directed at objects, (ii) have the same formal object (or core relational theme), (iii) share the same distinct phenomenology, (iv) are associated with the same type of action tendencies and (v) serve the same general function” (see Cova & Deonna, 2014, p. 449). When trying to describe the formal object of this emotion, Cova and Deonna pointed to a positive core value perceived by the subject as standing out in each situation (Cova & Deonna, 2014, p. 447). More recently, Cullhed (2020) has singled out “attachment” as the key to understand being moved, arguing for “dearness” as the formal object of this emotion. Cullhed's approach has led Deonna to fine-tune his previous definition, emphasizing the quality of the subject's experience:

It seems to me that what is phenomenologically salient in a typical experience of being moved, when one is moved simply by a person, place, or event, is this: one takes in the situation or the event and feels suddenly or increasingly knocked over by it; this happens in a way that is soon experienced as the recognition that something distinctively important, profound, or meaningful is occurring; and this is followed by a momentary suspension of ordinary engagement with the world, in a state that can be described as contemplative and reverent. (Deonna, 2020, p. 200)

In this paper, I build on these considerations focusing on the interplay between the situations evoking being moved, the formal object of this emotion and the role that material objects from everyday contexts might play in it. I will argue that the quality of the experience described by Deonna can be produced in the presence of everyday objects under specific circumstances, which have to do with the affordances of those objects.

By a way of preface, however, a big question needs first to be clarified, namely, what do I mean by “objects”? Recent scholarship on Byzantine production and perception of art has devoted a great deal of attention to materiality, especially in connection with the viewing subject's affective engagement with special artifacts such as icons, relics, and artworks in general. The focus has been primarily on ritual practices and religious contexts, with holy icons taking the lion’s share (for an overview Stephenson, 2016 and see Walker, 2012 for the dismantling of the anachronistic divide between fine and decorative arts and the cognitive aspects involved in art-perception). Ritual objects, however, are not what I am interested in. In the present paper, as mentioned above, I look at everyday objects, that is objects that are not endowed with symbolic and or ritual meanings with the aim of understanding how and when objects shape affects and more specifically how they may (or may not) elicit being moved as a discrete emotion. My purpose is to reconcile phenomenologically and cognitively oriented approaches, fostering dialogue between two different perspectives on the same subject.

Since I am particularly interested in texts, I will consider a specific case study belonging into a highly formalized rhetorical genre, that is the monody or the funeral oration. First, however, I will look at a conceptual distinction that has dominated part of the research on materiality in the humanities, namely the difference between objects and “things.” Going beyond a simply phenomenological approach, I will suggest a different theoretical model, which can afford a more comprehensive explanation of “being moved by objects.”

Byzantine “Things” and Objects’ Affordances

The material turn and the new interest for ecological perspectives (Goldwin, 2018) have brought “Thing Theory” into Byzantine studies. Thing Theory was introduced 20 years ago by Bill Brown in a monographic issue of Critical Inquiry (Brown, 2001). Building on the distinction introduced by Heidegger (2003)—who was in turn reflecting on Kant—between “object” and “thing,” Brown explains how things emerge out of objects in a twofold way. First, objects become things when their sheer materiality comes to the fore, regardless of their function, which depends on human subjectivity and representation. Second, things emerge from objects when the latter's function is overcome and a difference and therefore new potential appears. “You could imagine things … as what is excessive in objects, as what exceeds their mere materialization as objects or their mere utilization as objects-their force as a sensuous presence or as a metaphysical presence, the magic by which objects become values, fetishes, idols, and totems” (Brown, 2001, p. 5). Absence can also reveal things, especially the absence caused by death. In the same issue of Critical Inquiry, Michael Taussig points up such a relationship, taking his cue from Ariel, the last poem of Sylvia Plath:

Things are not symbols or start points for a multitude of poetic associations. Nor are they signs of anything much. Rather they are things, just things, criss-crossing back and forth between the animate and inanimate with the poet as the point of mediation, the question insistently posed, the question that makes us seem no less foolish than wise: How is it that the distinction between subject and object, between me and things, is so crucially dependent on life and death? Why is death the harbinger and index of the thing-world, and how can it be, then, that death awakens life in things? (Taussig, 2001, p. 305)

No wonder, then, that Thing Theory has been considered a viable theoretical framework to conceptualize relics and their function in Christian ritual and spirituality. Cox Miller asserts that “a bone becomes a relic when its surplus value is elicited aesthetically, in both art and rhetoric, and theologically, in terms of belief in saintly intercession” (Cox Miller, 2009, p. 2). Similarly, taking his cue from Heidegger and Brown, Glenn Peers reads the icon as a “thing” and puts emphasis on the fact that the viewer is in fact a “dividual,” a porous, non-discrete being. Icons, connecting the human and the divine, have a transformative and active power; in turn, the act of vision as conceptualized by the Byzantines is an act of engagement and energy exchange with the thing seen (Peers, 2012, 2013). On the one hand, the observer cannot be considered as an individual, given such a constant exchange, while on the other hand, objects are, in fact, “quasi objects,” ontologically ambiguous, given their ability to act on the user/viewer (Peers, 2021).

While accounting for the way Byzantine icons were interacted with as well as for the emotions they generated (for love, see Peers, 2009) the framework of Thing Theory appears to be problematic for three reasons—and it is perhaps not a coincidence that in his most recent treatment of “Byzantine things” Glenn Peers resorts more to Latour than to Brown (Peers, 2021). First, if it is true that ontological ambiguity—one of the hallmarks of the icon—is at the core of Brown's theory, “thinginess,” as Brown conceptualizes it, is something that goes beyond the function of the relevant object, something that becomes perceptible when a given item does not work anymore for us or when its materiality overcomes its original function. The animated matter of Achilles’ shield in the Iliad, taken by Brown (2015, pp. 1–7) as the prototypical ecphrastic description, emerges so powerfully and starkly because it supersedes the function of the shield as a weapon. As pointed out by Dini in her insightful review (2017) of Brown (2015), “the story of objects asserting themselves as things, then, is the story of a changed relation to the human subject and thus the story of how the thing really names less an object than a particular subject-object relation.” I will come back to this relation in a moment, but these few lines seem to suggest that whereas relics or ritual objects like ampullae, flasks, jugs, etc. match the description well, this is not entirely true for the icon. Granted, the icon is perceived as ontologically ambiguous, but such ambiguity is intrinsic to its design, so to speak, and tied to its primary representational, cultic and ritual function as an object. The second point pertains to the role of the subject. In his recent Other Things (2015), Brown is less radical than in his original essay in breaking down the subject-object binary, although he retains “some version” of it “in behalf of apprehending an object-thing distinction whose explanatory power lies in the cultural fields,” so as to show that the attention to material culture/objects and to “thinginess” can fruitfully converge and be productive together. Such an emphasis on the cultural fields speaks to the claim that, to fully understand Byzantium, we should embrace its “animistic worldview” (Peers, 2012). Such a stance, however, entails a problematic overlap between emic and etic points of view (Pike, 1967; with Otto, 2018 for the Middle Ages; and see Nelson, 2007 more specifically for Byzantium and the icon), which prevents conversations with other fields such as historical cognitive studies that engage with the same phenomena. This leads me to the third point: from the perspective of emotion research, not only does Thing Theory undertheorize the emotions elicited by things, but, more importantly, it does not offer a viable framework to understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying and sustaining such emotions.

Taking my cue from this last point, I would like to advance a different hermeneutic model for one of the ways in which materiality can evoke being moved, with the aim of accommodating and explaining the affective impact of specific interactions with (everyday) objects.

The model is simple. It looks at objects in terms of affordances, that is in terms of what they provide or “afford” to the living being (Gibson, 1979; and see Chemero, 2009, pp. 22–24, 98–102 for an overview of ecological psychology). It considers affordances as relational, following Chemero (2003, 2009). Chemero takes affordances as relations between particular aspects of animals and particular aspects of situations. Affordances are relations between animals and features of situations. In this respect, affordances acquire sharper ontological contours than in the original description by Gibson, which reads as follows:

[A]n affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both if you like. An affordance cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer. (Gibson, 1979, p. 129)

According to Chemero (2009), affordances 2.0 start with affordances 1.0. Perceiving affordances is “placing features, seeing that the situation allows a certain activity” (Chemero, 2009, p. 142): affordances are relations between abilities and features of the environment. Considering “experimental and explanatory practices of ecological psychologists,” Chemero adds to the definition developmental time, to account for the feedback loop between the animal's sensorimotor abilities and its ecological niche complete with affordances. Time makes the relationship dynamic and subject to change. Emotions fit naturally into this picture, as affective stances are crucial to determining action tendencies that are prompted by affordances (Slaby et al., 2013, p. 42; Jensen & Pedersen, 2016, pp. 85–87). Like Gibson, Chemero also subscribes to the fact that “affordances do not disappear when there is no local animal to perceive and take advantage of them” (Chemero, 2009, p. 150), but Chemero's more dynamic approach also allows for accommodating further aspects such as situatedness, culture and the social (cf. Knappett, 2004).

On this basis, I argue that objects become “moving” when their affordances cease to be relational and point to an absence or inconsistency at one of the poles of the relation, thus rendering the affordance itself “void” or “broken,” so to speak. In other words, when we realize the permanent character of an object's affordance, as against the fluctuation of our tastes, desires, needs, and even our being in the world, we are also made aware of the values and potential dearness tied to that affordance. This awareness in turn may evoke being moved, precisely because the “broken” affordance elicits and highlights a “momentary suspension of ordinary engagement with the world, in a state that can be described as contemplative and reverent,” to put it in Deonna's words (2020, p. 200). Such a model also squares well with Cullhed's recent observation (2020, p. 115) that we do not “apprehend this value in everyday situations but only when our attention is drawn to it, often in precarious situations,” which also explains why being moved is often evoked by negative scenarios. This accounts for much of the emotional impact of the thinginess theorized by Brown, if we consider examples like DeLillo's powerful description in Falling man (analyzed by Brown, 2015, p. 17), where the protagonist, fleeing the collapsing towers on 9/11, begins to see “things, somehow, differently. Things did not seem charged in the usual ways, the cobbled street, the cast-iron buildings. There was something critically missing from the things around him. They were unfinished, whatever that means. They were unseen, whatever that means, shop windows, loading platforms, paint-sprayed walls. Maybe this is what things look like when there is no one here to see them.” It also explains the way objects are used to sustain emotionally collective memory, as shown, for instance by the impact of the Budapest Holocaust memorial, lining up lonely shoes on the Danube's banks, resonating in turn with the piles of shoes at Auschwitz. Shoes, molded by the feet and visibly carrying their imprint, testify more than anything else to the object's broken affordance, pointing to the abnormality of the Shoah, again, as a “suspension of ordinary engagement with the world.” Going back to my opening example, the emotion generated by the golden casket, stopping the procession, is elicited also by the inconsistency between the affordance of the material (a luxury container of gold) and how it is used (for a handful of dirt). As studies in design have confirmed, “the invariant qualities of man-made objects also constitute affordances” (Fisher, 2004, p. 24). The material of an object plays its role in affording given actions (see Barati & Karana, 2019). This stance dovetails with both the reflections of art historians, who have theorized that materials also provide meaning (Lehmann, 2012), and the recent appeal to shift the emphasis from materiality as an abstract concept to materials and their properties. As stated by Ingold (2007), we should speak of “materials and their properties” rather than of the “materiality of objects,” and Peers has recently stressed, regarding the Byzantine world, that “humans and materials work together in a mutually enlivening process of more or less ability or interest in self-articulation on the part of either” (Peers, 2021, p. 112).

In the next section, I will build on these insights, to show how an 11th-century author, Michael Psellos, effectively used objects to move the audience and share his own sorrow.

Materiality and Emotion in Psellos’ Funeral Oration for his Daughter Styliane

Byzantine rhetoric does not provide any explicit theorization on emotions elicited through affordances of objects. References to materials, however, broadly understood, have a role in reflections on enargeia, that is to say, vividness in speech. Since antiquity, materiality is implicitly inherent in the very idea of rhetorical vividness as a technique through which things are put “before the listeners’ eyes” (Webb, 2009). It is not only a matter of rhetoric and visualization through words. The idea of having “something before the eyes” implied, from an emic point of view, the belief in a material exchange with the object itself. Psellos, for instance, the figure at the center of this paper, building on Plato, mentions a theory of vision conflating extramission (effluences moving from our eyes to the object) and intromission (effluences moving from the object to our eyes: Betancourt, 2018, pp. 30–31 and 117; Ierodiakonou, 2020, p. 171). Matter and enargeia were also closely connected in the Stoic construction of kataleptike phantasia (Frede, 1999), as shown by the very metaphor underlying the concept (i.e., knowing as grasping, see Betancourt, 2018, pp. 147–148; 157–158). Papaioannou (2011) has demonstrated that enargeia, although widely practiced and pervasive in Byzantine rhetoric, is undertheorized in rhetorical treatises, where vividness is often associated to metaphorical speech and similes. Papaioannou explains this approach through the “Byzantine allegorical semiotics,” that is “the trend of reading external appearances and material forms of all sorts—such as texts, ‘words’ or ‘myths’ … but also bodies, gestures, stars, dreams, visions, and natural phenomena—as signs and, ideally, ‘true’ signs of inner and hidden meaning” (Papaioannou, 2011, p. 54). The overwhelming role of metaphors in vivid discourse, however, can also be read in terms of embodied cognition. According to both stronger (Gallese & Lakoff, 2005; Gibbs, 2006; Gibbs et al., 2004; Wilson & Gibbs, 2007) and weaker embodied cognition views (Boroditsky, 2000; Boroditsky & Ramscar, 2002; Wolff & Gentner, 2011) metaphors, by evoking previous experiences and concrete knowledge, provide cognitive access to abstract concepts. Emphasis on embodied cognition is naturally particularly strong when rhetorical theory tackles the affective aspects of vividness. Repeated stress on material details is for instance recommended in the 11th century by John Sikeliotes, the first Byzantine to comment on Hermogenes’ treatise On the types of style—part of the major rhetorical handbook inherited from Graeco-Roman times—from a Christian perspective (see Conley, 2002–2003; Papaioannou, 2015, 2019). His take on vividness reads as follows:

Second, if we want to stick to the thoughts, say for instance through the figure of anaphora …, we also can move the listener to something emotional (εἰς τι τῶν παθῶν). I think that this too belongs to vividness (ἐνάργεια): Christ was born, Christ from heaven, Christ on earth; the insistence on the thing pointed to pleasure; and the opposite: son now arousing pity, son whom I nourished in the precipices and on the mountains (τέκνον ἐλεεινόν, τέκνον ὃ κρημνοῖς καὶ ὄρεσιν ἐθρεψάμην): through the vividness of the mother's emotion the text moves us to lament. I posit that these and such are the characters of vividness, as they depict clearly and distinctively the state of affairs. (7.2, 337; 1 ss. Walz, 1834)

The emotion of the Virgin becomes vivid thanks to the repetition focused on her early relationship with and attachment to the Son. The Virgin expresses her emotions through a lament focused on the memory of the attachment bond. The contrast with the present pitiable condition of the Son, with his untimely death, moves Mary and the listeners.

The same technique, used to represent and stir emotions, is to be found in the text that I am about to examine, that is the monody by Michael Psellos for his daughter Styliane, who died when she was nine-year-old. The text was composed by Psellos (1018–1096), Constantinople's leading intellectual figure in his time, in the summer of 1054. Styliane was his only daughter and she presumably fell victim to the outbreak of smallpox that hit the capital that year. The devastating nature of the illness made her passing even more difficult to endure for her parents, who had to witness her suffering and the disfigurement of her young body. The monody is a piece designed for private consumption and was written one year before Psellos retired to a monastery. The text still lacks a proper modern critical edition, and the following quotations are based on Sathas (1876, pp. 62–87) and on the translation by Kaldellis (2006, pp. 111–138, modified when needed).

In his thorough analysis of the text, Agapitos (2009) has shown that this piece of “applied rhetoric” (p. 582) pertains to the genre of the “emotional monody,” as categorized by Ps. Menander in the 3rd century CE. Emotional monodies are characterized by an overwhelming presence of laments, which have a stirring impact on the audience. Such an effect is obtained by means of encomium and, once again, by vividness, as implicitly stated by ps. Menander in the following passage:

The expression of the lamentations must be developed in full so that the distinction of the persons concerned can be seen, while you move the listener again to lamentation. Let the encomia be your raw material for the lamentation. (420.6–9; transl. Russell & Wilson, 1981, p. 175)

Not coincidentally, the emotional impact of the laments embedded in the Styliane monody is increased, as stressed again by Agapitos, by “only one major acoustic device,” that is the “anaphora as a series of questions” (Agapitos, 2009, p. 590). Anaphora informs also the representation of the bystanders’ laments before Styliane's actual passing, in a way that is reminiscent of Sikeliotes’ advice. Psellos focuses on the nurses’ response, stressing the special bond they felt towards the body they had contributed to nourishing and growing:

Also her wet nurses and caretakers, who more than the others, like mothers really, embraced the body that lay there, enveloping it in an embrace and calling upon their mistress, their lady, the one whom, apart from giving birth to her, they had swaddled and breast-fed and nourished and raised to such an age. (37; Sathas, 1876, p. 79; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 132)

The monody for Styliane, one of the most moving, emotional and intimate pieces of Byzantine literature and one characterized by a distinctive emphasis on corporeality (Agapitos, 2009, pp. 586–587; Walker, 2004; Kaldellis, 2006, p. 112; Papaioannou, 2013, pp. 220–221 with further literature) offers a suitable case study for assessing how affordances of objects impact on the emotions. Agapitos (2009) already demonstrated how a comparison with other more public monodies, together with the Menandrean model used as a foil, can show where and how the text becomes more personal, reflecting Psellos’ deep affective involvement. Taking a similar approach, I will use another well-known piece dedicated by Psellos to a female member of his family, that is the encomium for his mother Theodote, to shed light on the powerful role of materials and objects in the monody for Styliane. The fact that encomium was so important in structuring the latter, as we have seen above, facilitates the comparison between the two speeches despite the differences in circumstances and in the way the personae of the deceisead are construed. The two pieces, moreover, were probably chronologically very close, although the encomium for Psellos’ mother was likely designed to be pronounced on a public occasion. Finally, the relationship between Psellos and the two deceased women can help us to map out the different strategies used to arouse emotions against distinctive core ethical values related to different patterns of attachment to parents and children, as perceived by contemporary learned audiences.

Ps. Menander recommends dividing emotional funeral speeches according to the subsections of the encomia, that is the family, birth, nature, nurture, education, accomplishments of the deceased (Russell & Wilson, 1981, pp. 173–174). One of the main aims of the first section is to recall the youth and education of the lamented person. Psellos devotes to Styliane's education the third section of his monody (for a partition of the speech see Kaldellis, 2006, p. 112). Among her skills, weaving takes the lion's share, although Psellos stresses that Styliane was also proficient in reading and writing, so much so that she had managed to memorize the psalms of David (12; Sathas, 1876, p. 67). Tellingly, the same combination of interest in literacy and skillfulness in the typical female occupations such as weaving and embroidery, is emphasized also in the encomium for Theodote. However, in the latter, Psellos does not provide any specific detail or material description of the work produced by his mother, as we shall see in a moment. In the case of Styliane, on the contrary, the woven object emerges powerfully in its uniqueness in Psellos’ description and the listener is taken back in time to watch the movements of Styliane's hand on the loom and the fine patterns thus produced:

'Eντεῦθεν κερκίδες αὐτῇ προσεκτῶντο, καὶ λῖνα λεπτὰ ἐξυφαίνετο, καὶ τὰ διαπλεκόμενα τοῖς τῶν σηρῶν νήμασι σχήματα καὶ ποικίλματα τοῖς ἐλεφαντίνοις ἐκείνης δακτύλοις εὐαφῶς ἐναπαρτιζόμενα, οὐκ εἶχε κόρον ἐς τὸ θαυμάζεσθαι.

In time, shuttles were acquired for her and fine linens were woven, and the woven patterns gently completed by her ivory fingers were an endless source of wonder. (10; Sathas, 1876, p. 66; transl. mine)

Noting the original text is key here, as objects take center stage and become the subjects of the sentences. The shuttles, the patterns taking shape, the light fabric are at the center of the scene. The presence of Styliane herself, in this picture, shrinks to her working hand, seemingly turned into a manufactured object or a tool by the adjective “ivory” (ἐλεφαντίνοις). Surprisingly, the adjective had barely been used to describe a human hand before Psellos. There seem to be only two occurrences, in ancient Greek and imperial literature: in Aristophanes (Knights 1169), where it is referred to the hands of the chrysoelephantine statue of Athena, and in Alciphron, where the girl loved by the fictional letter-writer is said to play the lyre with ivory fingers (4.11.8). In the latter case, we are thus confronted again with a bodily part that is objectified and almost becomes one with the tool it operates.

As shown by Cutler (1994), the materiality of ivory lent it special qualities, providing objects with a tactility that was very much appreciated by the Byzantines. Traces of wear at specific points of plaques and small icons show that ivory was caressed, touched, rubbed. If we admit that materials also have affordances, as suggested by design studies, then ivory affords a highly emotional involvement. Ivory is also characterized by a certain inbetweenness, given that it is suspended between the organic and the non-organic world. The reference, therefore, does not point only to the whiteness of Styliane's hand. It also serves the purpose of turning the hand itself into a cherished and precious object, one that offered itself to touch and dearness. It was also a way to eternalize Styliane's hand, removing it from decay. In fact, few paragraphs later, we learn that Styliane's delicate hand had been disfigured by illness. Her soft skin had been ravaged by smallpox, so that her mother was barely able to hold her hands at the moment of passing:

She raised her hands ever so slightly, though these too were burdened and ravaged by sores, with barely bones and scalp left in them (μηδὲν πλέον τῶν ὀστῶν ἐχούσας καὶ τῆς δορᾶς), and she yoked them to the hands of her mother (ταῖς μητρικαῖς χερσὶν συζεύξασα). Thus, did she grant what I now know was her last embrace, which she formed by giving her hands in this way. (36; Sathas, 1876, p. 79; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 132, slightly modified)

This final moment of dearness between Styliane and his mother acquires an even more poignant meaning, as Styliane's hands are de-humanized.

As often noted, Psellos was particularly sensitive to the potential ontological ambiguity of unanimated matter (Betancourt, 2020; Papaioannou, 2006). It is therefore not surprising that materials play such a role in emphasizing the attachment bond with Styliane and the dearness of her memory. The passages quoted above show to what extent “broken” affordances contribute to enhancing the emotional charge of the text by bringing to the fore objects and materials. First, the zooming in on the shuttles point to the missing end of the relational affordance, as Styliane's fingers are not there anymore to operate them. Though they had been acquired in vain, they persist beyond Styliane's death. Those objects are still there to be seen, unlike the hand that acted on and created them. Second, the living and the dead matter are inverted as regards the affective gestures they afford. Due to illness, Styliane's hand does not afford to be touched anymore; by reminiscing about it, on the other hand, Psellos turns it into an object whose materiality (ivory) did afford in Byzantium touch and caressing. Styliane herself, in turn, approaches her mother's hands as if hers, reduced to bones and scalp, had become lifeless objects.

The objectification of Styliane's body recurs throughout the oration and it is part of Psellos’ praising strategy. This is particularly clear in the section devoted to the girl's physical appearance, as shown in detail by Papaioannou (2013, pp. 220–221 and cf. 14–25; Sathas, 1876, pp. 68–72; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, pp. 123–126). The awe she inspires and the beauty she is adorned with is compared to those of the Aphrodite of Knidos, a statue famously triggering illicit acts of physical love in the beholder:

Her thighs, next, widened out on either side, inferior in no way to the statue of Aphrodite of Knidos, with which, the myths say, a certain man joined in love, because he was so taken by the beauty of the statue. (24; Sathas, 1876, p. 72; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 126, slightly modified)

When Psellos comes to describe Styliane's hands, they are equated to materials that are midway between the unanimated and the animated, twigs and, again, ivory:

From her palms grew fingers which seemed like newly budding twigs. Wider at the base and polished smooth, they gradually became thinner before reaching the nails. Seeing them, you might compare them to newly cut ivory tusks (νεοπρίστου ἐλέφαντος) fashioned into the fingers of a hand. (22; Sathas, 1876, pp. 71–72; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 126)

The reference to the world of objects is reinforced by the intertextual reference to Homer. The iunctura or word combination νεοπρίστου ἐλέφαντος is found only once (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 8.18 is also derivative and in any case, it is in the genitive plural), namely in Odyssey 8.404. The line is uttered by Euryalus and describes the gift he offers to Odysseus at Alcinoos’ court:

I will give him this sword, all of bronze, with a handle of silver, a scabbard of new-sawn Ivory (νεοπρίστου ἐλέφαντος) is wrought about it; and it will be a most precious thing to him. (8.403–405; transl. Murray, 1919)

The intertextual interplay strengthens the visual power of Psellos ekphrasis, as it evokes in the cultivated reader/listener another set of images. In Homer, the freshly cut tusks are hollowed, becoming a casing for the sword. I would argue that the reference further enhances the material ambiguity of Styliane's hands, later spelled out in the scene of the girls’ passing. Ivory, made of dentine, has a bone-like appearance, but, unlike bones, is here exposed and functions as a cover instead of being covered by skin, just as it happens with Styliane's hands, which in the end are eaten up by the disease.

Weaving is a traditional female occupation; therefore it is no wonder that it is singled out as an exceptional ability also in the portrait of Theodote. Remarkably, however, in the encomium, we do not find any description of specific objects or a more concrete representation of her weaving practices. Fabric is mentioned (3b), but in very general terms, as a synecdoche for the act of weaving itself; more importantly, if we look at the syntax of the relevant passage, the focus is firmly on human agency. As in the passage devoted to Styliane, mastery with the loom is an object of admiration, but the subject is the weaving person and the stress is on her agency and motives rather than on the objects resulting from it. Similarly, although weaving hands are mentioned, they are not Theodote's but belong to the female gender in general. Rather than the practical skills of his mother, Psellos – through a Homeric quotation (Il., 6.456 and Od. 2.104) – emphasizes the abstract intellectual and ethically sound process (γνῶμαι εὐφυεῖς) that sustains them:

Τὰ μὲν γὰρ πρὸς 'ἱστὸν' καὶ ὅσα γυναικῶν χεῖρες 'ὑφαίνουσιν', ἢ ὅσα γνῶμαι εὐφυεῖς ἀναπλάττουσιν, ὧν καὶ αὐτὸς πολλάκις γέγονα θεατής, οὐδεμία τῶν ἁπασῶν γυναικῶν ἐκείνῃ ἐρίσειεν.

Regarding the working of the loom and whatever the hands of women weave or whatever clever minds create, of which things even I myself often became a witness, not a single woman could have competed with her. (3a-b; Criscuolo, 1989, p. 89.129–90.132; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 55)

A few lines later (4b-c; Criscuolo, 1989, p. 92.213–93.246), Psellos compares Theodote with the woman praised by Solomon, who in Proverbs (31:19; 31:22) is said to weave only two garments for her husband. On the contrary, Theodote weaves for herself—given the status of the family, Psellos’ father did not need her to make his clothes—and for the poor. Objects here, rather than being emotionally charged become pointers of ethical virtue and pious charity, which are standard themes in the praise of women in Byzantium (Hatlie, 2009, p. 46).

The peculiar emphasis on objects that were once Styliane's is indicated by the linguistic choices to describe items from the girl's everyday life. Such is the case, for instance, with the headbands mentioned at 22:

Above her forehead, it was parted in two and stretched away on either side in orderly curves, where it was intertwined and held in position by inserted hair bands (τοῖς ὑπενθέτοις ἀμφιδέσμοις), gushing forth insatiate delight. (Sathas, 1876, p. 71; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 125, modified)

Although attested very rarely in written sources (see Lexikon zur Byzantinischen Gräzität http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lbg/#eid=1 s.v.), ἀμφίδεσμος points to the headbands adorning the hairdos of elite women in the middle byzantine period, as shown by Maria Parani (2003, p. 63).

Once again, if we look at the encomium for his mother, Psellos is restrained in the description of Theodote's physical beauty, including her hair and skin. Although some expressive formulas are the same—especially the comparison with the natural world—the description does not provide any concrete detail, nor does it mention specific objects (2c; Criscuolo, 1989, p. 88.101–103).

Hatlie (2009) has shown that one of Psellos’ main aims in praising his mother is to stress her role as an educator, while Papaioannou (2013, p. 162) has highlighted the "hagiographical veneration" characterizing the oration, which has also a very strong symbolic meaning (Walker, 2004). This focus on ethical concerns, together with the public character of the speech explains why the oration lacks the affective quality and the consequent attention to objects we find in the monody for Styliane. In the speech for Styliane, on the contrary, enargeia, which adds to the highly emotional atmosphere, is accomplished precisely by focusing on objects and materials as much as on the girl's actual figure. Note, for instance, the way Psellos describes her attire, which again does not find a real parallel in the funeral oration for Theodote (and cf. Psellos’ statement at 26; Sathas, 1876, pp. 72–73; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 127):

The sprightly motion of her feet, the way her tunic was lifted by the wind when she walked, the gathering up and binding of her thin and even transparent linen clothes about her waist, the open movement of her fluttering legs and ankles, the way her mantle was draped and arranged around her shoulders and neck, as well as the way it clung to and enveloped all areas of her chest and back … (27; Sathas, 1876, p. 73; transl. Kaldellis, 2006, p. 127)

Going back to the comparison between the speeches for Styliane and Theodote, another reason for the difference between them might lie in the way a Byzantine courtier and intellectual like Psellos conceptualized the ethics relating to the bonds of attachment toward parents and children.

As recently shown, Psellos was a keen reader of the Nicomachean Ethics, from where he frequently quotes throughout his work (Benakis, 2009; Walter, 2020). Aristotle theorized the attachment toward parents and children in the eighth book of the EN as follows:

Now parents know their offspring better than children know that they are their children, and the originator feels his offspring to be his own more than the offspring do their begetter; for the product belongs to the producer (e.g. a tooth or hair or anything else to him whose it is), but the producer does not belong to the product, or belongs in a less degree. And the length of time produces the same result; parents love their children as soon as these are born, but children love their parents only after time has elapsed and they have acquired understanding or the power of discrimination by the senses. From these considerations it is also plain why mothers love more than fathers do. Parents, then, love their children as themselves. (EN 8.12.2–3 1161d, transl. Barnes, 1984, p. 1835)

According to Aristotle's model, then, the intensity of the attachment felt for one's offspring exceeds the love for parents. Equally, children elicit a greater sense of belonging and they are better known by their parents than vice-versa. Psellos’ knowledge and engagement with the EN provides a suitable philosophical and ethical framework for the different display of emotions and attachment in the monody for Styliane and in the encomium for Theodote. The reference to Aristotle is not farfetched, since Psellos quotes EN precisely in the encomium for his mother at least twice (7c, 13a; Criscuolo, 1989, p. 100.431, 110.727) and elsewhere he uses EN VIII to discuss the relationship between brothers (Or. 31.37–64 and 136–137 with Walter, 2020, p. 3).

In conclusion, the analysis I have offered of Psellos’ monody for Styliane shows that reading the presence of objects in literary texts in terms of affordances and relationships, broken or overturned due to adverse circumstances, helps us to understand the emergence of material things. The objects described by Psellos both contribute to the energeia or vividness of the speech and move the audience, because they point to the broken relationship between them and Styliane and, more broadly, between Styliane and her parents. They do not evoke just sadness, but rather the sense of being moved, as the formal object of the emotion is the goodness inherent in the parents–daughter attachment and in the young girl's life. Empty affordances thus provide a rationale explaining how everyday objects can be used to move audiences, evoke a sense of dearness (of something lost), to borrow Cullhed’s (2020) conceptualization or else produce a “momentary suspension of ordinary engagement with the world” in Deonna's (2020) terms. Affordances in turn, as possibilities provided by the environment, including materials, are at times culturally determined. Ivory spoke to the Byzantine user in a way that we do not share and afforded behaviors that can be understood only by considering a series of ritual and social aspects specific of the Byzantine world. This is, once again, evidence of the insights that cultural, literary and cognitive studies, all working together, can offer to our understanding.