Literature is not just an art of writing. Like any art, it is also a game. More or less 'serious', depending on the intentions of the author. Emmanuel Roidis, a witty and cultivated writer, and indeed above the average of his era's readers, with characteristic obsession, disguises his text as a playful word game.

Twisted quotations, altered references, ambiguous errors, anagrams, and plagiarism weave a dense intertextual 'plot' that builds a second text, open to multiple readings. This second text enriches the first with different, often unexpected content and, through intricate pathways, ultimately places the (philosophical) reader in the coveted but also challenging position of the author.

Stavros Kritiotis, a scholarly writer who has distinguished himself for his obsession with intertextual pleasures, exemplarily excavates, records, evaluates, and presents in the current volume all the complex intertextual techniques and tricks, all the hidden treasures of playful Roidian discourse, similar to those that he himself ingeniously identified in Pope Joan as the 'drawers of his opinion'.