The Ancient Novel and the Frontiers of Genre

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.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments VII

Introduction IX

A UTOPIA AND PARADOXOGRAPHY 1

DISKIN CLAY†
Lucian's Philosophical Island 3

HEINRICH KUCH
The Genre Understanding of the Utopian Novel 11

BENJAMIN HALLER
Homeric parody, the isle of the blessed, and the nature of Paideia in Lucian's Verae Historiae 23

VALENTINA POPESCU
Lucian's True Stories: Paradoxography and False Discourse 39

B FLUID TEXTS 59

ROGER BECK
The Adventures of Six Men in a Boat: the Astral Determinants of a Maritime Narrative in the Anthologies of Vettius Valens 61

HENDRIK MÜLLER-REINEKE
Facts or Fiction? The fruitful relationship between Ancient Novel and literary Miscellany 69

GRAMMATIKI A. KARLA
Isis-Epiphany in the Life of Aesop: A structural analytic approach 83

C CROSSED GENRES 103

REGINE MAY
Medicine and the Novel: Apuleius' Bonding with the Educated Reader 105

NICOLAS BOULIC AND FRANÇOISE LÉTOUBLON
Pirates in the Library 125

LORETO NÚÑEZ
Liminal Games: Fluidity of the Sphragis of a Novelist 143

D HYBRID FORMS 169

ANGELO CASANOVA
Tombs and Stables, Roofs and Brothels, Dens and Raids in Lollianos' Fragments 171

FOTINI HADJITTOFI
Erotic Fiction and Christian Sexual Ethics in Nonnus' Episode of Morrheus and Chalcomede 187

JIRÍ ŠUBRT
Hagiographic romance: novelistic narrative strategy in Jerome's Lives of Hermits 205

Abstracts 215

Autobiographical Notes 221
Indexes 225
Index locoroum 225
General Index 227