Reconfiguring the template: representations of powerful women in historical fiction—the case of Anna Komnene

Based on the research hypothesis that fiction portraying powerful historical women can help to open up imaginative spaces that transcend phallocentric models and propose new templates for re-thinking the powerful woman, I explore representations of twelfth-century Byzantine historian and princess Anna Komnene in historical novels by Vera Mutafchieva (1991) and Maro Douka (1995). Komnene’s double authority as a writer and political player was resented by historians, who saw her as a “power-hungry,” masculine and emasculating woman; yet the fictional (re)constructions set up a much more complex and nuanced picture, suggesting alternative configurations of female authority. Writing outside the Anglophone canon, Bulgarian Mutafchieva and Greek Douka challenge patriarchal and exceptionalist concepts of power. These writers locate Komnene’s agency not only in her position, education and gift for writing, but also in the collective actions of the women who nurtured and supported her, adopting an intersectional perspective on the construction of female authority