This book stems from my doctoral dissertation at the University of Oxford and explores the portrayal of women in early Christian Armenian texts.
The idea of researching this topic emerged in 2010, in my final year as a Master’s student in the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where, amongst other things, I received extensive training in feminist literary criticism. While preparing the research proposal for the DPhil programme in Oxford, I came to realise how little feminist and gender-critical scholarship existed in the field of Armenian studies, especially in relation to the late antique and medieval period of Armenian history. Several years of painstaking but immensely rewarding research driven by a genuine desire to fill this lacuna have resulted in this monograph.
The main aim of this book is to explore the issue of representation of women in the fifth-century Armenian literature and historiography, and to investigate the ways in which the largely patriarchal society of Armenia treated women after Christianisation. A close scrutiny of the rhetorical aspects of the texts and of the content of the passages that speak about women enables us to acquire a deeper understanding of the role of women in society as envisioned by the ecclesiastical authorities of the country and to gain insightful, albeit limited, knowledge of women’s lived experience.
A certain bias and wishful thinking may unwittingly creep into one’s investigation of the representation of women of a specific ethnic group, when one is a male researcher belonging to the same ethnicity. The awareness of this potential pitfall urged me to challenge and reassess my findings and interpretations at every step of this study in order to minimise the possible shortcomings. Systematic use of the most rigorous research methods appropriate for the present undertaking has been a crucial factor in ensuring that this problem is circumvented.
With this book I hope to strengthen the presence of feminist discourse in the Armenian studies and invite scholars working in adjacent fields to contribute to the integration of knowledge about Armenian history and culture into wider scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. I anticipate that this work will lay the groundwork for future study into the history of women in the Armenian tradition.
It should also be mentioned that in the preparation of this study I have examined primary and secondary sources in the original language of composition with the exception of Syriac texts, because, regrettably, I have no command of that beautiful language. This is the reason why the Syriac texts are provided only in English translation. All translations from primary sources are mine, unless I am quoting from a scholarly translated edition of the text.
David Zakarian
Oxford, May 2020