Book contents
- Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries
- Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts
- Chapter 1 The Politics and Practices of Commentary in Komnenian Byzantium
- Chapter 2 Forging Identities between Heaven and Earth
- Chapter 3 Cultural Appropriation and the Performance of Exegesis in John Tzetzes’ Scholia on Aristophanes
- Chapter 4 Uncovering the Literary Sources of John Tzetzes’ Theogony
- Chapter 5 Odysseus the Schedographer
- Chapter 6 Eustathios of Thessalonike on Comedy and Ridicule in Homeric Poetry
- Chapter 7 Geography at School
- Chapter 8 Painting and Polyphony
- Chapter 9 Parodying Antiquity for Pleasure and Learning
- Chapter 10 Teaching Poetry in the Early Palaiologan School
- Chapter 11 Late Byzantine Scholia on the Greek Classics
- Chapter 12 Theodora Raoulaina’s Autograph Codex Vat. gr. 1899 and Aelius Aristides
- Chapter 13 The Reception of Eustathios of Thessalonike’s Parekbolai in Arsenios Apostolis’ and Erasmus’ Paroemiographic Collections
- Index
- References
Chapter 9 - Parodying Antiquity for Pleasure and Learning
The Idyll by Maximos Planoudes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2023
- Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries
- Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts, 12th–15th Centuries
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts
- Chapter 1 The Politics and Practices of Commentary in Komnenian Byzantium
- Chapter 2 Forging Identities between Heaven and Earth
- Chapter 3 Cultural Appropriation and the Performance of Exegesis in John Tzetzes’ Scholia on Aristophanes
- Chapter 4 Uncovering the Literary Sources of John Tzetzes’ Theogony
- Chapter 5 Odysseus the Schedographer
- Chapter 6 Eustathios of Thessalonike on Comedy and Ridicule in Homeric Poetry
- Chapter 7 Geography at School
- Chapter 8 Painting and Polyphony
- Chapter 9 Parodying Antiquity for Pleasure and Learning
- Chapter 10 Teaching Poetry in the Early Palaiologan School
- Chapter 11 Late Byzantine Scholia on the Greek Classics
- Chapter 12 Theodora Raoulaina’s Autograph Codex Vat. gr. 1899 and Aelius Aristides
- Chapter 13 The Reception of Eustathios of Thessalonike’s Parekbolai in Arsenios Apostolis’ and Erasmus’ Paroemiographic Collections
- Index
- References
Summary
The celebrated scholar and literatus Maximos Planoudes (ca. 1255–ca. 1305) was a leading exponent of the study of ancient literature in the late Byzantine world. While best known for this engagement – embodied in his collection of epigrams, the Planoudean Anthology, in his critical editions of, and scholia for, classical texts and in his translations of Latin literature – he also composed an undeservedly little-known poem in the tradition of the ancient Greek idyll. A humorous piece, drawing on numerous ancient sources, particularly on bucolic poetry in the tradition of Theocritus and on Lucian’s satires, it exhibits a refreshing jocularity not usually evident in his other literary activities. This chapter offers a close reading of the Idyll, highlighting its themes of love and homoeroticism, the alterity of otherworlds, and magic and the marvellous. It investigates its connections to other literary traditions and to Planoudes’ scholarship as a whole, and considers the reception of the poem in Byzantium. In composing an idyll – unprecedented in Byzantine poetry – Planoudes creates a parody of ancient texts and authors that is both entertaining and instructive, while being unique in its setting and context.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022