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From Greek to the Greeks: Homer (and Pseudo-Homer) in the Greco-Venetian Context between the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century

From the book Making and Rethinking the Renaissance

  • Caterina Carpinato

Abstract

In the years following the print revolution, Greek intellectuals adopted the new medium in order to convey the Greek literary heritage to a wider audience. One of the first (if not actually the first) Greek literary texts to be printed was the Batrachomyomachia, published in Brescia in 1474: the poem was printed at least three times during the second half of the fifteenth century (1474, 1486, 1488) and the first decades of the sixteenth century. It was also published in a vernacular Greek version (1539?). In 1526 Nikolaos Loukanis published a poetical reworking of the Iliad in Greek that included a poem about the fall of Troy. The use and re-use of the Homeric heritage by Greeks who had settled in Venice is symptomatic of reflection on the use of the spoken language and of vernacular literature amongst Greek scholars in the West.

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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