The article deals with some aspects of the 19th c. fortunes of the Modem Greekpicaresque novel Ό Πολύπαθης (The Much-Suffering/The Much-Tried, Athens1839). Written by Gregorios Palaiologos, a Greek born in Constantinople andactive particularly in France and the Greek State, the novel gained its justifiedfame especially through its four-volume «Greco-Turkish» («karamanh»)adaptation by Evangelinos Misaelides (Ταμασάϊ Δοννγιά βε Αζεφακιάρ-ονΛζεφακές / Tamasa-i Diinya ve Cefakâr u Cefakes = The Spectacle of the World.The Torturer and the Tortured, Constantinople 1871-2). The original Greek workwent almost unnoticed in Athens at the time and was only recently «rediscovered» by Modern Greek editors and comparatists; yet Misaelides, a leadingfigure in «Greco-Turkish» literature and a well-known translator, editor andpublisher in Smyrna and Constantinople managed to transform Palaiologos’novel into an influential and very popular work that combines the technique of aframe story with inserted anecdotes, apologues and a rich gamut of mythological,historical, religious and ecclesiastical, and anthropological material.Believed for a long time as being an original work, and the first ModernTurkish novel as well, Temasa-î Diinya was repeatedly praised by turcologists,reedited recently in Istanbul in the Moden Turkish (romanized) alphabet andstudied either as a piece revealing interesting linguistic features of the OttomanTurkish of the time or as an evidence of a pro-Ottoman literary movementembraced by the Turkish-speacking Orthodox Christian élite supposedly fullyintegrated into the Ottoman «tradition» and the so-called Ottoman polysystem.The author points out a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions anddiscusses some prejudices both of Turkish and Greek scholars. In his opinion,Misaelides’ profound knowledge of the ancient, medieval and Modem Greeklanguage and literary tradition, as well as his awareness of contemporary WesternEuropean (mainly French) literary trends should not be questioned; in matters ofintertextuality, a much greater range of Modern Greek literary texts (includingthe novelistic Apocrypha, from the mid 19th c. onwards) should be investigated asan eventual parallel set of sources of this «Greco-Turkish» masterpiece.