Pseudo-tragica Prodromea: The shadow of pathos over the glitter of the Byzantine secular literature

Abstract

By analyzing primarily the sources for the 1st through the 3rd books of the verse novel Rhodanthe and Dosicles by Theodore Prodromos the author of the paper attempts to point out an enormous influence exerted by the Euripidean drama on the emergence of motifs, common-places and tropes in this novel, as well as to emphasize, on the one hand, in which mesure these drama-components are consistent with the logical structure of a different literary genre, and on the other, how much they represent a ballast and a purely erudite ornament for the novelist, intended exclusively for the achievement of pathos.

Keywords

• byzantine novel
• classical tragedy
• euripides
• mimesis