Απολλώνιος της Τύρου (3 τόμοι) [Apollonius of Tyre (3 Vols)]
G. Kechagioglou
For the first time, this three-volume work offers scholars and the readers of adventure fiction the totality of the known Greek texts (circa mid-14th century until mid-20th century) which belong to so-called Apollonius of Tyre or are related to this narrative work.
Apollonius of Tyre began its famous career as an ancient novel of maritime and other adventures, romance, complex family relationships and, later, various dynastic and politico-military aspirations in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Though surviving only in a Latin, prose, partly Christianized version dating back to late antiquity, the work gradually became a European ‘folk book’, exerting a profound influence not only on the prose and poetry of Medieval and Renaissance known and anonymous authors, but also on leading dramatists such as Shakespeare. At the same time, it had a decisive impact on the literary and editorial production of modern times and on the anonymous folk oral tradition.
The Greek folk tradition of Apollonius of Tyre is the longest and most enduring, and one of the most interesting ones in Europe, despite the fact that its earliest known texts did not directly originate in antiquity, but derived from two different Italian versions of the work created in the 14th century. The significance of the verse of the Greek Apollonius of Tyre for the evolution of narrative literature and the development of the Greek-speaking readership of the Venice editions, particularly from 1524 onwards, cannot be stressed enough.
The new and voluminous edition of all the Greek versions is not just a reprint of the known texts (i.e., two long verse narratives, four shorter ‘rhymes’ and four tales in prose), but it also presents hitherto unpublished forms of these texts. At the same time, it revises and completes all previous incomplete editorial and philological attempts. Moreover, it provides extensive commentary on the manuscript and print tradition, the language, the style and the metre, the themes, the technique and the ideology of the texts, thus broadening the space and time of the creation and crystallization both of the earliest known version (which most likely originates in Cyprus), and the second, much more successful and long-lasting known version (which derives from Crete). In addition to the texts, their respective introductions and commentary, the book also offers experts, students and the wider public who love narrative stories and their folk endings abundant supplementary material and aid (complete tables of words-glossaries, alphabetically organized tables of hemistiches, a list of rhymes, comparative appendices containing the text of the Italian originals, illustration). All these can prove useful for the deeper understanding and study of many other works of the earlier periods of Modern Greek literature.
G. Kechagioglou is professor emeritus at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
| Full title | «Απολλώνιος της Τύρου»: Υστερομεσαιωνικές και νεότερες ελληνικές παραλλαγές (3 τόμοι) [«Apollonius of Tyre»: Late Medieval and subsequent Greek versions (3 vols)] |
| Author | G. Kechagioglou |
| Editing / Translation | |
| Edition | 2004 |
| ISBN | 960-231-107-X (set), 960-231-108-8, 960-231-109-6, 960-231-110-Χ |
| Series | |
| Pages | 2519 |
| Size | 19,5x28 |
| Weight | 4,869 |
| Binding | Paperback |
| Sample |