Ancient Narrative Supplementum 8 is the first volume to be dedicated entirely to parallel readings of the Greek and the Roman novel. As a rule, publications taking a comprehensive look at the ancient novel treat the Greek and the Roman novels independently of each other, or at most discuss standard thematic categories. It is intriguing that a sharp distinction between the Greek and the Latin novels should have ever existed and that it should be tacitly maintained at the present time. Of the three surviving Latin novels, Apuleius' Metamorphoses has a Greek model, Petronius' Satyrica bears distinct traces of Greekness, and the Historia Apollonii strongly resembles the Greek ideal novel, especially Xenophon's Ephesiaka. The discovery of new papyrus fragments of Greek fiction (Lollianos' Phoinikika, the Iolaos and the Tinouphis fragments) has shown that low-life, comic, and sensational features are not the exclusive province of the Latin novel. Recent chronological revisions have squeezed the dates of the earliest Greek novels into the period between 41 and 75 A. D., thus envisaging the "birth" of the Greek novel and that of the Roman Satyrica as contemporary or near-contemporary events. The need to re-examine the relations between the two main traditions of the ancient novel in the context of a unified Greco-Roman tradition emerges today as more urgent than ever. The portrayal on the cover page of this volume of Echo and Narcissus, of self-reflection and reduplication of sound, symbolizes a pictorial challenge to look at the dialectics of the Greek and the Latin novels and appreciate their intimate relationship.
The parallel readings of the present volume explore various issues in Greco-Roman fiction: political accommodation in coming-of-age novels, the language and practice of magic, narratives of failure, textual considerations and narrative meaning, hidden authors, proposals and criteria for dating, the access to knowledge, plot structures, religion and narrative, the fortunes of Athenian Hellenism, vision and narrative, attitudes towards Roman imperial rule, and the motif of the stolen cup.
Table of Contents
STEPHEN HARRISON AND MAAIKE ZIMMERMAN, Acknowledgements. MICHAEL PASCHALIS AND STAVROS FRANGOULIDIS, Introduction. JEAN ALVARES, The Coming of Age and Political Accommodation in the Greco-Roman Novels. GARETH SCHMELING, Narratives of Failure. CONSUELO RUIZ-MONTERO, Magic in the Ancient Novel. NIALL W. SLATER, Posthumous Parleys: Chatting Up the Dead in the Ancient Novels. MICHAEL PASCHALIS, The Greek and the Latin Alexander Romance: Comparative Readings. JOHN MORGAN, Kleitophon and Encolpius: Achilleus Tatius as Hidden Author. EWEN BOWIE, Links Between Antonius Diogenes and Petronius. KEN DOWDEN, A Lengthy Sentence: Judging the Prolixity of the Novels. ANDREW LAIRD, The True Nature of the Satyricon? ROMAIN BRETHES, Who Knows What? The Access to Knowledge in Ancient Novels: the Strange Cases of Chariton and Apuleius. STAVROS FRANGOULIDIS, Transforming the Genre: Apuleius' Metamorphoses. STEPHEN HARRISON, Parallel Cults? Religion and Narrative in Apuleius' Metamorphoses and Some Greek Novels. STEVEN D. SMITH, Wonders Beyond Athens: Reading the ‘Phaedra' Stories in Apuleius and Heliodoros. KIRK FREUDENBURG, Leering for the Plot: Visual Curiosity in Apuleius and Others. ELLEN FINKELPEARL, Apuleius, the Onos, and Rome. MAAIKE ZIMMERMAN, Aesop, the ‘Onos', The Golden Ass, and a Hidden Treasure. Abstracts. List of Contributors. Indices.
Extra information
A pdf file containing the Table of Contents, Introduction and Indices is available here for free.
Subscribers to the on line version of Ancient Narrative can download the pdf file wth the full text of this volume at http://www.ancientnarrative.com/.
A list of all volumes that have appeared in the Ancient Narrative Supplementa is available here.
Reviews
- John Birchall, Scholia Reviews (2009) 18
- Stefan Tilg, Ordia Prima 7 (2008), 234-241
- Judith Hindermann, Museum Helveticum (2008) 65, 232
- Sarah Rey in Les Etudes Classiques (????) ??, pp. 269-270
