The present volume comprises most of the papers delivered at RICAN 4 in 2007. The focus is placed on readers and writers in the ancient novel and broadly in ancient fiction, though without ignoring readers and writers of the ancient novel. The papers offer a wide and rich range of perspectives: the reading of novels in antiquity as a process of active engagement with the text (Konstan); the dialogic character, involving writer and reader, of Lucian’s Verae Historiae (Futre Pinheiro); book divisions in Chariton’s Callirhoe as prompts guiding the reader towards gradual mastery over the text (Whitmarsh); polypragmosyne (curiosity) in ancient fiction and how it affects the practice of reading novels (Hunter); the intriguing relationship between the writing and reading of inscriptions in ancient fiction (Slater); the tension between public and private in constructing and reading of texts inserted in the novelistic prose (Nimis); the intertextual pedigree of the poet Eumolpus (Smith); Seneca’s Claudius and Petronius’ Encolpius as readers of Homer and Virgil and writers of literary scenarios (Paschalis); the ways in which some Greek novels draw the reader’s attention to their status as written texts (Bowie); the interfaces between tellers and receivers of stories in Antonius Diogenes (Morgan); the generic components and the putative author of the Alexander Romance (Stoneman); Diktys as a writer and ways of reading his Ephemeris (Dowden); the presence and character of Iliadic intertexts in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (Harrison); the contrasting roles of the narrator-translator in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and De deo Socratis (Fletcher); seriocomic strategies by Roman authors of narrative fiction and fable (Graverini & Keulen); reading as a function for recognizing ‘allegorical moments’ in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (Zimmerman); active and passive reading as embedded in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius; and the importance of book reading in Augustine’s ‘novelistic’ Confessions (Hunink).
Reviews
Louis Callebat, Latomus 71, 2012 (Nr 2), 549-551
Lawrence Kim, in BMCR 2011.03.06.
Géraldine Puccini-Delbey, Revue des études Latines 87 (2009), 396-97
Acknowledgements VII
Introduction IX
DAVID KONSTAN
The Active Reader and the Ancient Novel 1
MARÍLIA FUTRE PINHEIRO
Dialogues between Readers and Writers in Lucian’s Verae Historiae 18
TIM WHITMARSH
Divide and Rule: Segmenting Callirhoe and Related Works 36
RICHARD HUNTER
The Curious Incident …: polypragmosyne and the Ancient Novel 51
NIALL SLATER
Reading Inscription in the Ancient Novel 64
STEPHEN NIMIS
Cite and Sound: The Prosaics of Quotation in the Ancient Novel 79
WARREN S. SMITH
Eumolpus the Poet 91
MICHAEL PASCHALIS
Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis and Petronius’ Satyricon 102
EWEN BOWIE
The Uses of Bookishness 115
JOHN MORGAN
Readers writing Readers, and Writers reading Writers: Reflections of Antonius Diogenes 127
RICHARD STONEMAN
The Author of the Alexander Romance 142
KEN DOWDEN
Reading Diktys: The Discrete Charm of Bogosity 155
STEPHEN HARRISON
Apuleius and Homer: Some Traces of the Iliad in the Metamorphoses 169
RICHARD FLETCHER
No Success like Failure: The Task of the Translator in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 184
LUCA GRAVERINI & WYTSE KEULEN
Roman Fiction and its Audience: Seriocomic Assertions of Authority 197
MAAIKE ZIMMERMAN
‘Food for Thought’ for Readers of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass 218
JEAN-PHILIPPE GUEZ
To Reason and to Marvel: Images of the Reader in the Life of Apollonius 241
VINCENT HUNINK
Hating Homer, Fighting Virgil: Βooks in Augustine’s Confessions 254
Abstracts 268
Indices 280
Index locorum 280
General index 281
