"Building on and echoing Averil Cameron's series of articles entitled New Themes, New Styles, the contributors to this volume wished to revisit the phenomenon of enhanced, renewed, or invented, literary and artistic modes of expression in the period after the great authorities of the patristic age until early Islamic times. In the period under investigation, that is the fifth to the eighth centuries, scholars may point to a transformation of artistic expressions in a number of ways. One such example is a marked increase in reductionist activity on the one hand, and the disappearance of classicising historiography on the other. In this volume, a number of experts from a variety of disciplines - studies in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, Arabic studies, Jewish studies, Syriac studies, and Art History - have come together to form a unique platform where the dynamic nature of Late Antique societies is portrayed against the background of the advent of Islam. Some rich encounters are revealed."--