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.