ABSTRACT
Pope Joan, everyone would agree, is an extraordinary novel. Published in 1866 by the thirty-year-old Emmanouil Roi"dis, it was a hapax for its author and for Greek literature. Coming as it did at the high point of the Greek reception of Western historical novels, which was accompanied by the slogan 'the pleasing and the beneficial', Pope Joan gave pleasure and was beneficial in surprising and unexpected ways. 1 At a time when Byzantium was being discovered and promoted by Zambelios as the link in the chain connecting ancient with modern Greece,2 and when Paparrigopoulos was introducing Byzantine history into his lectures at the University of Athens, Roi"dis set his novel in the medieval West and told the story, not of knights and chivalrous deeds, but of monks and illicit affairs. 3 While Romanticism had as its bywords inspiration, unity and originality, Pope Joan made a show of its research, its fragmentation, its derivativeness. When literature was meant to serve the exigencies of the national cause, supporting and nourishing it, Pope Joan unsettled and created doubt.
