Βαρλαάμ και Ιωάσαφ [Varlaam and Ioasaf]

Varlaam and Ioasaf is rightfully considered one of the masterpieces of Byzantine religious literature and was one of its most popular and most widespread works. The text owes its charm both to the exotic, eastern (Indian) origin of the myth, and to the narrative talent of monk Ioannis, who reworked it.

The book is organized into two sections. In the first one, the author seeks to present an overall picture of modern research findings regarding the hitherto known Greek folk variations of the novel, focusing on the myth’s origin, the work’s plot, the fortunes of the scholarly text in literature and the pictorial arts of various countries, and discussing the findings concerning the six hitherto known Greek folk variations. A detailed description of the particular variation follows (focusing on the text’s language and its orthographic idiosyncrasies), and its thematic divergences from the scholarly Greek text are pointed out. Finally, a brief account of the way the Italian original of the Lavra variation was discovered is presented, and the findings of the comparative examination of the Lavra variation text and its Italian original are listed. In the second section, the author presents, for the first time in their entirety, the texts of the Greek folk variation of the Lavra manuscript and its Italian original. The book also includes a glossary and a table of the proper nouns of the Greek text.