A fragment of a Greek novel?: P3. Med. 36 revisited (original) (raw)
Related papers
Greeks, barbarians and strangers in papyrological fragments of lost novels
Lucentum, XVII-XVIII (1998/1999); pp. 221- …, 2001
For Emilio, SI8OCCKÓ(A,CJÚI (|nA,oco(¡)íac Una de las cuestiones que ha despertado reciente interés entre los helenistas es la postura que los griegos adoptaron hacia los otros pueblos antiguos con los que mantuvieron contacto, en una actitud oscilante entre la presunción y la curiosidad. Nuestro propósito es ilustrar el tema en el marco concreto de los fragmentos de novela, intentando alcanzar alguna hipótesis de carácter más general.
Classical quarterly, 2009
It is commonly known that Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon is set apart from the other ancient Greek novels by its narrative technique. 1 It is the only extant Greek novel in which the story is narrated by the protagonist himself. 2 The novel's prologue is set in Sidon, where an anonymous narrator beholds a painting of Europa's abduction by Zeus and gives a lengthy description of it (1.1.2-13). The painting is simultaneously viewed by a young man who turns out to be Clitophon, the hero of the novel, and the two men begin a conversation about the power of eros. Clitophon is invited by the primary narrator to tell about his own experiences with eros. Once Clitophon has started his narration (1.3.1), the primary narrator never intervenes, and the frame narrative in Sidon is apparently never resumed. 3 This note contributes to the wider issue of narrative structure in Achilles Tatius. I argue that Clitophon's portrayal of Leucippe at the end of the first book (1.19) contains a deliberate reference to the frame narrative and thus constitutes an example of the narratological device of metalepsis, defined by G. Genette as 'a deliberate transgression of the threshold of embedding'. 4 Metalepsis, then, is the slippage between different levels of narration, or, in M. Fludernik's words, 'the move of existants or actants from any hierarchically ordered level into one above or below'. 5 In SHORTER NOTES 667 8 We are very grateful to Rhiannon Ash, Mikolaj Szymanski, and CQ's referee for suggesting various improvements. 1 The novel is usually dated in the early second half of the second century A.D. See OCD 3 s.v. Achilles Tatius and E. Bowie, 'The chronology of the earlier Greek novels since B.E. Perry: revisions and precisions', Ancient Narrative 2 (2002), 47-63, at 60-1, who proposes A.D. 164 as a terminus ante quem. 2 On the uniqueness of this homodiegetic narration in the novelistic corpus, see, among others,
The relationship between the Greek novel and the 'real world' deserves reconsideration. Because the Greek-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire have recently inspired a large number of publications, this paper aims at delivering some remarks relative to the sort of historical informations which can be drawn from these texts, so far improperly characterized as 'ideal novels'.Concerning elite, for instance, wealth appears to be more important than eugeneia, even if it allows to perform prestige through the same social practices of differentiation than before. Secondary roles and even groups of ordinary people (sailors , goatherds) display a large description of Greek civic societies, not restricted to the elite.
Modern Literary Theory and the Ancient Novel: Poetics and Rhetoric, edited by Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, Stephen A. Nimis, and Massimo Fusillo, 2022
Modern critical terminology is full of references to ancient literary theory, whose precepts are often used as a starting point for new theories. Unfortunately, the opposite situation does not occur often. While there has been some progress in recent years in applying the methods of modern critical theory and the insights of related disciplines such as narratology, reader-response theory and modern and post-modern criticism to classical literature and specifically to the area of the ancient novel, only sporadically has classical literature been studied and analyzed according to these exegetical trends. The course taken by research in literary studies has also demonstrated that rhetoric is a fundamental discipline forTheory of Literature and for literary praxis. It is not only a science for the future but also a science à la mode, which finds its own place on the edge of structuralism, “New Criticism”, and semiology. In the Greek world under the Roman Empire, the tradition of rhetorical learning reached its heyday in the second century A.D., with the cultural movement named as “Second Sophistic”. Despite the emphasis on rhetoric, literary culture lato senso was was also part of it, granting a special place to poetics and literary criticism. In the wake of this hermeneutical and interdisciplinary approach, the papers assembled in this volume explore significant issues, which are linked to the narrative structure of the ancient novel and to the tradition of rhetorical learning, both envisaged as a web of well-constructed narrative devices.
Review of "A Companion to Greek Literature" by M. Hose, D. Schenker
Classical Review, 2016
The academic world is currently host to the proliferation of variously labelled compendia of topically or thematically defined Darstellungen, the genre to which this book belongs. Among the medium’s inherent merits is that it allows editors more discretionary latitude than, say, a textbook or a reference work does. It is also, though, prone to the negative consequences of cronyism, a problem for which there is no obvious practical solution. In any case, as the phenomenon inexorably swells our library collections, the profit lines of publishers and the CVs of contributors, these compendia have become a major presence in the apparatus of teaching and scholarship. It is, therefore, gratifying to encounter a specimen of the genre that promises as successfully as this one to inform and whet the interest of a variety of readers. It has been an engaging and stimulating exercise to read this collection with its multiple perspectives on the panorama of Greek literature from Homer to the threshold of the Byzantine era and its extended effects on the cultural history of the centuries since. All of that is supplemented by entries on what might collectively be termed ‘para-literary’ matters: inter alia L. Del Corso on ‘Mechanics and Means of Production in Antiquity’ (pp. 9–26), R. Armstrong on ‘Textual Survival and Transmission’ (pp. 27–40), E. Wilson on ‘Trends in Greek Literature in the Contemporary Academy’ (pp. 491–510) (i.e. curriculum, pedagogy, critical approaches etc. in English-speaking, but mainly American, schools and universities.) The editors follow a creative plan, reflective in a way of Greek literature itself, that integrates traditional and predictable elements (a total of fifteen chapters dedicated to individual chronological periods and major literary genres) with innovative or unusual approaches and themes, some of which few readers are likely to anticipate. The content is deployed in an editors’ introduction and in 33 chapters distributed thematically (more or less) among eight Parts. Each of 30 contributors presents a single chapter and editor H. adds a medley of three (‘Philosophical Writing’, pp. 235–55, ‘Places [i.e. cities] of Production’, pp. 325– 43, and ‘Literature and Truth’, pp. 373–85) distributed among three different Parts. The contributors, some of them well-known and veteran scholars, are drawn from two or three generations and from the international community of classicists. All this lends a lively poikilia of mode and method to the collection. No particular target readership is specified, and if the reference in the first sentence of the introduction to ‘an introductory companion volume’ should suggest that the content is directed more towards neophytes than towards periti, any such notion is soon dispelled. For one thing, notwithstanding the copious prefatory key to abbreviations, the novice will surely balk at many conventions of scholarly writing including such intra-textual references as ‘P. Cair. Masp. II 67097 and 67185’ or ‘Σ Aristoph. Equ. 400a = Cratinus, Pytine test. ii, PCG Vol. IV’. From the opposite perspective, it would be a rare journeyman Hellenist, however thoroughly versed in Greek literature and its criticism, for whom there are not at least some ‘introductory’ moments in a volume that distils an accumulation of earlier scholarship too vast and varied to have been mastered by any individual. Indicative of that are the bountiful bibliographies that accompany individual chapters. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 1
Latin Literature's Greek Romance
Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici, 1995
The anonymous Latin prose romance, the Historia Apollonii régis Tyri, occupies an awkward place in our construction of classical literary history1. Surveys of the Greek romances frequently skip over this work, considering it a Latin aberration far removed from the Greek «ideal romance»2. At the same time, studies of Latin novelistic prose tend to dismiss the Historia as an intruder from an alien Greek tradition3. In thè criticai literature devoted to the Historia Apollonii, the most persistent question engages precisely this issue of the work's textual status: is the Historia Apollonii, whether considered at the level of linguistic, generic or cultural codes, to be thought of as the product of Greek literary traditions or as an original work of Latin fiction4? Since coming to terms with the Historia entails deciphering its textual status, it may be helpful to look at the way the text construes its own conditions of literary engagement, how it sends itself off with gestures to indicate its supposed reception. We read at the end of the closing paragraph of thè story that the work is imagined in not one but two distinct environments of textual circulation and use (H ist. Apoll. 51, 33-40): His expletis genuit de coniuge sua filium, quem in loco avi eius Archistratis constituit regem. Ipse quoque cum coniuge sua benigne vixit annis septuaginta-iii-. Tenuit regnum An-1. Earlier versions of this article appeared as a paper présentée! at the Yale Classics Colloquium in November, 1994, and as a section of my Ancient Romance and Medieval Literary Genres: Apollonus of Tyre, Ph.D. Diss., Princeton, 1995. My thanks go to Peter Brown and Froma Zeitlin for their helpful comments and advice.