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Textes et manuscrits grecs

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Résumé :

The article examines Theodore Prodromos’ schedographic production within the framework of education and literary writing in twelfth-century Constantinople. A number of Prodromos’ schede were conceived as part of triptych compositions of a performative character (e.g. a funerary set consisting of a poem, a schedos and a longer prose oration), creating a new type of rhetorical genre that catered to the needs of the aristocracy and that become widely successful. In this experiment “everyday language” played an important part, as two of Prodromos’ schede, written in a mixed language and with humorous intent, show. The paper argues that it is out of this context of literary experimentation that Prodromos developed his “satirical” vernacular poems, known as the Ptochopro - dro mic corpus. Some of these vernacular poems are directly connected as diptychs with Prodromos’ so-called historical poems (e.g. Carm. Hist. XXIV and Ptochopr. I, both addressed to John I Komnenos in 1141/2). It is thus shown that the traditional distinction between “learned” and “vernacular” language and literature does not exist as such, nor was it perceived in that way by Prodromos.