The present volume comprises thirteen of the papers delivered at RICAN 5, which was held in Rethymnon, Crete, on May 25-26,2009. The theme of the volume, ‘The Construction of the Real and the Ideal in the Ancient Novel,’ allows the contributors the freedom to use their skills to examine the real and the ideal either individually or in conjunction or in interaction. The papers offer a wide and rich range of perspectives: a political reading of prose fiction in Late Period Egypt (Selden); the presence of robbers and murderers in ideal fiction (Dowden); the interaction between illusion and reality in novelistic ekphrasis (Zeitlin); divine loves as real precedents for human loves (Rosati); comical elements in Heliodorus’ Aethiopika (Doody); myths as paradigms for the inexperienced lovers in the Greek novels (Létoublon); moral ideas in the Odyssey and the Greek novels in relation to moralizing interpretations of Homer (Montiglio); the reality of the basic plot of Callirhoe in the light of historical events and Aristotle’s Poetics (Paschalis); the interaction between fictionality and reality in Daphnis and Chloe (Bowie); entrapment and insufficient understanding of reality in the Satyrica (Labate); fantasy, physical and ideal landscapes in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (König); bridging the gap between Photis (real) and Isis (ideal) in Apuleius (Carver); the gendered aesthetics of the Greek novels viewed through the lens of the mimetic theory of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Whitmarsh).
Reviews
Fotini Hadjittofi in Evphrosyne 42 (2014), 310-313
Acknowledgments VII
GARETH SCHMELING
Introduction IX
DANIEL L. SELDEN
The Political Economy of Romance in Late Period Egypt 1
KEN DOWDEN
‘But there is a difference in the ends…’: Brigands and Teleology in the Ancient Novel 41
FROMA I. ZEITLIN
Landscapes and Portraits: Signs of the Uncanny and Illusions of the Real 61
GIANPIERO ROSATI
The Loves of the Gods: Literature as Construction of a Space of Pleasure 89
MARGARET DOODY
Comedy in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika 105
FRANÇOISE LÉTOUBLON
Mythological Paradigms in the Greek Novels 127
SILVIA MONTIGLIO
‘His eyes stood as though of horn or steel’: Odysseus’ Fortitude and Moral Ideals in the Greek Novels 147
MICHAEL PASCHALIS
The Basic Plot of Callirhoe: History, Myth, and Aristotelian Poetics 161
EWEN BOWIE
Caging Grasshoppers: Longus’ Materials for Weaving ‘Reality’ 179
MARIO LABATE
Tarde, immo iam sero intellexi: The Real as a Puzzle in Petronius’ Satyrica 199
JASON KÖNIG
Landscape and Reality in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 219
ROBERT H.F. CARVER
Between Photis and Isis: Fiction, Reality, and the Ideal in The Golden Ass of Apuleius 243
TIM WHITMARSH
The Erotics of mimēsis: Gendered Aesthetics in Greek Theory and Fiction 275
Abstracts 293
Contributors 301
Indices 305
Index locorum 305
General index 307
