The Ancient Novel and the Frontiers of Genre

Description

Despite the fact that post-modern aesthetics deny the existence or validity of genres, the tendency nowadays is to assume that there was in Antiquity a homogeneous group of works of narrative prose fiction that, despite their differences, displayed a series of recurrent, iterative, thematic, and formal characteristics, which allows us to label them novels. The papers assembled in this volume include extended prose narratives of all kind and thereby widen and enrich the scope of the canon. The essays explore a wide variety of texts, crossed genres, and hybrid forms, which transgress the boundaries of the so-called ancient novel, providing an excellent insight into different kinds of narrative prose in antiquity. Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction A UTOPIA AND PARADOXOGRAPHY Lucian’s Philosophical Island • Diskin Clay The Genre Understanding of the Utopian Novel • Heinrich Kuch Homeric Parody, the Isle of the Blessed, and the Nature of Paideia in Lucian’s Verae Historiae • Benjamin Haller Lucian’s True Stories: Paradoxography and False Discourse • Valentina Popescu B FLUID TEXTS The Adventures of Six Men in a Boat: the Astral Determinants of a Maritime Narrative in the Anthologies of Vettius Valens • Roger Beck Facts or Fiction? The Fruitful Relationship between Ancient Novel and literary Miscellany • Hendrik Müller-Reineke Isis-Epiphany in the Life of Aesop: a Structural Analytic Approach • Grammatiki A. Karla C CROSSED GENRES Medicine and the Novel: Apuleius’ Bonding with the Educated Reader • Regine May Pirates in the Library • Nicolas Boulic and Françoise Létoublon Liminal Games: Fluidity of the Sphragis of a Novelist • Loreto Núñez D HYBRID FORMS Tombs and Stables, Roofs and Brothels, Dens and Raids in Lollianos’ Fragments • Angelo Casanova Erotic Fiction and Christian Sexual Ethics in Nonnus’ Episode of Morrheus and Chalcomede • Fotini Hadjittofi Hagiographic romance: novelistic narrative strategy in Jerome’s Lives of Hermits • Jirí Šubrt Abstracts Autobiographical Notes Indices Index locorum General Index