A translation with introduction and notes by Gavin Betts, Stathis Gauntlett and Thanasis Spilias
Byzantina Australiensia vol. 14 (Melbourne 2004)
ISBN: 1 876503 12 2; ISSN: 0725-3079
xxxviii + 220 pages
Australian and New Zealand price: AU$36 including postage
All other countries: AU$48 including postage
During the later years of the Venetian occupation of Crete (1211-1669) the island enjoyed the intellectual and cultural stimulus of the Renaissance. This bore fruit not only in the work of painters such as Dominikos Theotokopoulos, alias El Greco, but also in poetry, where Vitsentzos Kornaros composed the most important work of early modern Greek literature, Erotokritos. Written c. 1600, this romance takes over the theme of a minor French poem, Paris et Vienne of Pierre de la Cypède, and puts it in a Hellenic setting where knights, both Greek and foreign, come to joust in an imaginary pre-christian Athens. It is here presented for the first time in a complete English prose translation with a scholarly introduction and notes.