The genre known as the ancient novel is of obvious importance to areas of modern studies in literature, fiction, and literary theory that have roots in classical antiquity. The ancient novel is also of interest to areas of linguistic, psychological, and sociological research that deal with texts as transmitters of cultural information. The ancient novel reflects societal and cultural changes, particularly in readers’ tastes, that occurred over the period in which the novels were composed, roughly from first to the fifth or sixth century AD. But who were the readers of ancient novels, and what value did they find in a genre that had little philosophical or educational significance despite its apparent popularity throughout the Roman Empire? What accounts for the interest in novels despite the near silence on the genre in antiquity? In order to appreciate the allusions to epic, tragedy, myth, and history, ancient novel authors must have taken for granted a substantial level of education for at least some of their readership, yet the genre itself receives next to no mention from learned contemporaries or subsequent ancient commentators and scholars.
Studies in the ancient novel have changed greatly since early scholars considered them mystery texts or romances for women. The ways in which contemporaries appreciated ancient novels and how modern scholars now regard and analyze them are just a few of the subjects that this Wiley-Blackwell Companion examines. A Companion to the Ancient Novel pulls together different perspectives and interpretations on a wide variety of topics in a manageable way to serve as a suitable introduction for readers new to the genre. This collection also provides unique insights for the experienced ancient novel reader, as it articulates the perplexities that have challenged scholars since the genre first caught the academic world’s attention in the nineteenth century. Some contributors include excerpts of the original Greek or Latin text, but an English translation is always given to accommodate the non-classics reader.
The first section, “Novels and Authors,” blends new ideas with overview material on the novels and related genres. Each contribution notes something unique about the particular work under discussion, trends in scholarship that might not otherwise make it into a collection of this kind, while at the same time covering the basics, such as what is known about author, date of work, transmission of the text and manuscript tradition, summary of the novel itself, and other necessary background information that will quickly bring new readers up to speed and prepare them for subsequent sections.
Graham Anderson’s “Chariton: Individuality and Stereotype,” begins the first subsection on the five canonical Greek novels, so called for their general similarities and completeness. As many authors in this collection do, Anderson uses a range of subheadings, such as “Literary Context,” “Humor,” “Historical Feel,” “Characterization,” and “Cultural Norms and Ethos,” to focus the reader’s attention, in this case, on the novel Chaereas and Callirhoe. The author, Chariton, uses a plot typical of the five canonical Greek novels—namely, boy meets girl then loses girl—as a platform for wild adventures that keep the action moving from Sicily to Ionia and Babylon, all the while entertaining a learned if not precisely identifiable audience. The storyline, which is outright folkloric at times, is particularly cohesive and keeps the reader in suspense for the duration as to how the heroine will ever possibly be reunited with the hero.
In “Daphnis and Chloe: Innocence and Experience, Archetypes and Art,” Jean Alvares introduces Longus’ novel, a simple story about young love and budding sexuality that holds the reader’s interest for four books without degenerating into licentiousness, though at times Longus comes close to crossing the line. The young hero and heroine tend flocks in the countryside and do not stray far from home, unlike the main couples of the other novels who separate and travel the known world in an effort to reunite. Daphnis and Chloe eventually marry and learn the true meaning of life-long love, a message, Alvares shows, of decorum and sensibility for both the city and country dweller. Their rustic upbringing in fact prepares them for the rigors and expectations of aristocratic adulthood.
James O’Sullivan in “Xenophon, The Ephesian Tales” (Ephesiaka) builds upon his previous research on both the text and the story to provide thorough background information and summary. He discusses what is known about the author, Xenophon, the likely date of the work (c. 30–40 AD, according to O’Sullivan), theme and elements of theme, and most notably the relationship between Xenophon’s The Ephesian Tales and Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe. O’Sullivan engages the latest scholarly views on all aspects of this novel, which is the shortest of the five canonical novels, including the role of historiography in Xenophon and Chariton.
Kathryn S. Chew introduces readers to Leucippe and Cleitophon in “Achilles Tatius, Sophistic Master of Novelistic Conventions,” which, in addition to useful background information, examines the influence of the Second Sophistic literary movement on Achilles Tatius’ distinctive approach to novelistic norms. Chew highlights Achilles Tatius’ uniqueness as a novelist by presenting her summary of the story through expected norms (e.g. “love at first sight”; “focus on the heroine”; “hero’s sidekicks”; “digression and descriptions”; “separation of the heroine and hero”; “Scheintod of the heroine”) and by illustrating how Leucippe and Cleitophon differs in all these areas from other novels.
Marília P. Futre Pinheiro’s “Heliodorus, the Ethiopian Story” completes the introductory overviews of the five canonical ancient Greek novels. The author, Heliodorus, was confused with a Christian bishop of the same name in late antiquity, which gives this highly skilled author an added air of mystery. Heliodorus’ use of Egypt as the backdrop to much of the novel allows him to play on notions of the exotic and the “other,” while his willingness to play on themes characteristic of epic, his experiments with suspense, anticipation, and the spectacular, and his subtle sense of humor center this novel between the ancient and modern.
The Roman novel is not as well defined as the canonical Greek novel. In “Petronius, Satyrica” (at times in this collection spelled Satyricon), Heinz Hofmann expertly manages controversial issues regarding manuscript tradition, authorship and dating of the text, and other significant aspects of the work that generate much debate because so little is known about any of these areas. Hofmann runs the gamut of scholarly hypotheses, and while he deviates somewhat from the norm by dating Petronius to the early second century AD rather than to Nero’s reign, nevertheless both novice and seasoned scholar alike will appreciate his analysis of the Cena Trimalchionis, his explication of the novellas and poetry that Petronius’ characters relate, and his careful discussion of the antecedents and influences of this novel.
“Apuleius’ The Golden Ass: The Nature of the Beast” is the first of Paula James’ two contributions, both of which deal with Apuleius and his Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass. In the overview of the main episodes, James takes an unusual approach by focusing on the first-time reader with actual first-time readers’ interpretations. Although James is an experienced Apuleius scholar, the readers she discusses were her administrative and curriculum management colleagues who had no knowledge of Latin. These uninitiated readers read the work in translation and shared reactions to its plot twists, horror, and humor that will lead the more familiar reader to rethink certain preconceptions about this strange story of a man magically turned into a donkey and then back again into a man after many adventures. James reminds us that the non-specialist often can offer unique insights into an old story.
Giovanni Garbugino concludes the subsection on Roman novels with his “Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri,” (Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre), which is written in Latin but, unlike the novels of Petronius and Apuleius, tends to follow the predictable plot series of adventures found in Greek novels. Features common to the genre include travels far and wide, separation of the main couple, and the seeming death of the heroine (Scheintod). However, other features are not so common, such as the lack of passion between the main couple, the focus on father–daughter relationships, and the obvious Christian elements. Nevertheless, the work is worth close examination because, as Garbugino notes, “in a period in which the Western world lost contact with the ancient Greek and Latin novel, the Historia had the function of intermediary between classical culture and the medieval horizon handing down the romance model to the Western world.”
The final subsection in the introduction deals with a subject matter often little known to classicists, but nevertheless important for what it can tell us about the novel and its context. In “The Other Greek Novels,” Susan Stephens compares fragmentary novels such as Metiochus and Parthenope, Ninus and Antonius Diogenes’ Unbelievable Things beyond Thule with better known Greek and Roman novels and notes similarities and differences. Fragmentary Greek novels differ in particular in plot; for example, the eponymous lovers Metiochus and Parthenope engage in philosophical conversations rather than share a “love-at-first-glance” gaze, and, though the fragments are too few to be certain, there seems to be no happy ending. Iamblichus’ lovers in the Babyloniaka have fantastic adventures that outstrip any in the five Greek novels, while the lovers in Antonius Diogenes do not begin their adventures as lovers but rather fall in love after adventures take them to Thule. Stephens observes that trans-cultural exchanges seem to be a common feature in the fragmentary novels, which might explain why these novels did not have the same appeal as their canonical counterparts: they may have been too regionally interconnected for wide appeal. An interesting observation is that, while the canonical novels were not rendered in the visual arts, the fragmentary novels frequently are depicted.
In “Hell-bent, Heaven-sent: From Skyman to Pumpkin,” Barry Baldwin gives a thorough and entertaining context for the elusive genre known as Menippean Satire, which encompasses a wide a variety of works, though few scholars agree on which should actually be included. Baldwin combs ancient sources to make sense of the originator of the genre, Menippus of Gadara, and touches upon other authors who either claimed to write Menippean Satire or are assigned to the genre based on the nature of their works; these include Varro, Lucian, Julian, and the author of the Apocolocyntosis (Seneca?—just call him “X”). There is too little certainty regarding Menippean Satire to pinpoint precisely what (if anything) the genre really was—surely more than a combination of prose and verse invented by Menippus and characterized by a preoccupation with death? Baldwin raises more questions than he accepts answers for, but the reader will come away knowing the most that is possible about Menippean Satire.
No writer in the later Roman Empire could have been ignorant of Christian voices and mores as that new religion began to permeate social and cultural norms. In “The Novel and Christian Narrative,” David Konstan and Ilaria Rimelli compare plot elements in ancient novels with those found in Christian narratives like the Gospels and Lives of Saints. Themes such as the determination to remain faithful and the ability to survive miraculous adventures and apparent death demonstrate similarities that strongly suggest intertextuality at its most basic: shared cultural background and experience. The connections between Christian narratives and the ancient novel should garner a more prominent place in novel scholarship: “For the ancient world, despite the deep changes brought about by the arrival of Christianity (and other religious traditions as well), was still one society, and comparable habits of story-telling lie behind a wide variety of classical and post-classical texts.”
A closer look at characteristics peculiar to the ancient novel as a genre occurs in the next section, entitled “Genre and Approaches.” Marília Futre Pinheiro’s second chapter in this collection, “The Genre of the Novel: A Theoretical Approach,” sets forth the many problems involved in identifying the elements that differentiate this genre from others. The majority of features associated with ancient novels are in fact not exclusive to the novel, such as young love, pirates, kidnappings, sham deaths, and necessary coincidences. Futre Pinheiro analyzes the sources and wades through decades of scholarly debate to conclude that there are three defining features of the ancient novel: “a narrative structure, the verisimilitude of the story, and the erotic motif.” These are the characteristics that connect the fragmentary, Greek, and Roman works ascribed to the genre of ancient novel.
Graham Anderson’s second chapter, “The Management of Dialogue in Ancient Fiction,” explores the different uses of dialogue in the ancient novel and notes that the more sophisticated and educated the author, the more the use of dialogue is likely to enhance emotion and humor and other parts of the story, especially when uneducated characters speak idiomatically. A less-educated author does not exert the same level of control over the use of dialogue, and as a result what his characters say has less of an impact on the story: “the further down the educational scale the text has slid, the more random and uncontrolled dialogue interchanges are likely to be.”
Koen De Temmerman’s “Characterization in the Ancient Novel” examines the themes of characterization in ancient novels and adaptations of character types from other genres. Ambiguity is one shared feature: many characters, even heroes and heroines, defy being labeled as “good” or “bad,” but fall somewhere in between. Ambiguity derives not only from actions, but also from comparisons with other mythological and historical figures; for instance, when Chaereas is compared to Alcibiades and Achilles in physical beauty, the reader is alerted to more than just the hero’s good looks: something of his nature is revealed as well. Other themes of characterization that occur are self-control and the development of a character’s narrative voice. Character themes are developed through using significant names and epithets, through character attributes both physical and metaphoric, and through cross-referencing different characters within the same novel.
The often-marginalized genre of the epistolary novel is the focus of Timo Glaser’s “Liaisons Dangereuses: Epistolary Novels in Antiquity,” which begins with the difficulties involved in defining that which defies “generic boundaries.” It took over 200 years after the time when these letters were realized to be fakes for scholars to take a closer look at their literary value, and several decades after that before a connection was made between these letters and the ancient novel. Starting with the loose definition of “novel in letters,” Glaser describes the overarching characteristics of the epistolary novel using the letters of Chion, Euripides (which surprisingly garner little attention among Euripidean scholars), Paul, and Seneca.
Vladamir Propp’s structural theory provides a set of unifying principles in Consuelo Ruiz-Montero’s “The Life of Aesop (rec.G): The Composition of the Text.” Ruiz-Montero argues that The Life of Aesop is a “compositional unity” that combines elements of oral and rhetorical traditions typical of the imperial period, but perhaps aimed at a less-educated, less-affluent audience than what near contemporaries, such as Plutarch, would have had in mind. Thematic motifs also exist in the Life that give it coherence, such as Aesop’s cunning. Although one of the more specialized essays in the collection, nevertheless novice and scholar alike will gain insight into The Life of Aesop and understand its relationship to the main representatives of the genre.
The authors of ancient novels interacted with and paid homage to not only other novelists, but to authors and texts of all literary types, and such intertextual references are the main focus of the next section, “Influences and Intertexuality.” The religion of Isis is a major influence in Stavros Frangoulidis’ essay, “Reception of Strangers in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: The Examples of Hypata and Cenchreae,” which compares and contrasts the reception of strangers and general hospitium. Frangoulidis concludes that the poor treatment that Lucius and others receive at the city of Hypata results from ignorance that can be attributed primarily to its inhabitants’ belief in magic and reliance on witchcraft to entertain the populace during a festival to the god of Laughter. A secondary cause of ignorance in the proper treatment of strangers lies in Hypata’s geographical location in the inland of Thessaly. In contrast, the population of Cenchreae is educated in the ways of hospitium because of its inhabitants’ devotion to the beneficent goddess Isis and, to a lesser extent, because of its location on the coast.
The gap between epic and novel is not nearly as wide as definitions of the genres might suggest. In fact, in “From the Epic to the Novelistic Hero: Some Patterns of a Metamorphosis,” Luca Graverini shows that the novelists constantly mine the epics of Homer and Virgil for character portrayals, suggesting at times a parodic relationship, though just as often the result is a meaningful departure from expected characteristics. Theatrical performances are alluded to, and the more salacious aspects of a hero’s life (e.g. Achilles’ effeminacy) and prominent themes (e.g. the sorrow for Patroclus, loyalty of Penelope, significance of dreams) are played out in ways that suit the medium of prose, especially the necessary happy ending of novels. The nuanced contradictory information that some intertextual references convey continues to be the focus of ongoing scholarly debate.
Judith P. Hallett and Judith Hindermann discuss the influence of elegy in “Roman Elegy and the Roman Novel.” Petronius and Apuleius engage and echo Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid in a host of ways, including language, convention, and theme. For instance, Hallett and Hindermann argue that, in the voyeuristic and sexually charged Quartilla episode of Satyricon 16–26, Petronius offers a “resistant reading” of Propertius 4.8 and critiques assumptions central to the genre of Latin love elegy itself. Petronius assumes a readership that is highly educated and looks upon earlier Roman elegists with a cynical eye. Apuleius, on the other hand, who “revealed” the “real” women behind the pseudonyms that elegists employed, more directly embraces and validates the motifs of Roman elegists, for example, love as slavery and the dominance of upper-class men by lower-class women.
Paula James’ second chapter, “Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: A Hybrid Text?,” assumes that the reader is familiar with the main gist of Apuleius’ novel and will therefore appreciate the finer points in this series of personal reflections on the novel. Not surprisingly, James’ opinion of the Metamorphoses has changed over the decades, and she shares those changes by focusing not on one particular aspect or scholarly interpretation, but on a range of Apuleian studies and essays that have caused her to rethink her views on both author and work. The story of Cupid and Psyche is analyzed within the larger context of the “man-becomes-beast” theme of the Metamorphoses, an especially rich area of exploration.
Françoise Létoublon’s “The Magnetic Stone of Love: Greek Novel and Poetry” shows the influence of Greek poetry in the Greek Anthology on Greek novels, using the metaphor of the magnetic stone not only “as a symbol of love and attraction between the two lovers,” but also to show “how the literary genres attract each another and the most recent borrow their word material from their predecessors.” Allusions to and the retelling of myths found in epic, tragedy, comedy, and lyric reflect ties to literary antecedents as well as to depictions popular in the visual arts, and the metaphors gleaned add both depth and relevance to the characters in Greek novels. Piracy and the magnetic attraction of love are other themes examined, and the result is an understanding of the importance of education in Greek poetry on the Greek novelists.
Marco Genre joins Françoise Létoublon in examining the influences of Greek theatre on Greek novels in “‘Respect these Breasts and Pity Me’: Greek Novel and Theater.” The influence of theatrical performances (both comedy and tragedy) is often overshadowed by the role of epic, for example, the reference to Hecuba’s baring her breast to Hector, allusions to which are found in both Chariton and Xenophon. Yet, the scene was referenced in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Euripides’ Hecuba, and the way the episode appeared in tragedy probably had a more immediate influence than the original scene in Homer. The vocabulary of Athenian plays likewise influences the novels, with New Comedy being the most obvious. References to theatrical performances, stagecraft, props, and dress permeate the novels and are closer and more relevant to its audience than the older epics.
Petronius’ use of poems, which are integral to the plot of his story, do more than enhance the parody and humor in the surrounding prose, according to Aldo Setaioli in “Poems in Petronius’ Satyrica.” Some of Encolpius’ poems, for example, reveal his reactions to predicaments and the changes in his mood in the midst of an episode. Other poems are recited in Encolpius’ role as narrator, and as such represent authorial programmatic references. Some poems are syntactically tied to the prose passages in which they are found, and all poems (with one exception) are complete. Recently discovered fragments of other fictional accounts in prose and poetry suggest that pairing the two was more common than once thought.
Niall Slater wends his way through stories about a man turned into an ass in the aptly titled “Various Asses.” A recent fifth addition to what appears to be four known ass stories is one of many complications that clouds our understanding as to how these works interact with and respond to each other. Apuleius’ version is Slater’s main focus with extensive passages of Ps. Lucian’s Onos compared for content; the newly discovered P. Oxy. 4762 fragment is brought in for its rare dialogue form and mixture of prose and poetry and explained in terms of several possible sources (e.g. Milesian tale, a fragment of Loukios of Patrae). Slater argues that a textual network of ass stories from which authors were able to pick and choose for their own narratives makes more sense than the assumption that one text served as the main source of contamination in subsequent authors. Such a textual network also adds a layer of sophistication to Apuleius’ choice to call his narrator “Lucius.”
In “Greek Novel and Greek Archaic Literature,” Giuseppe Zanetto discusses the five canonical Greek novels in light of their most frequently echoed antecedents: the Homeric epics. The plots all breakdown in their simplest forms to the separation, adventures, and reuniting of the male and female characters. Each ancient novel author is aware of and interacts with the Iliad and the Odyssey in his own way, usually for serious effect, but also for humorous parody. In some instances, Homer is referenced outright, but in others allusion forces the more sophisticated reader to connect a character or incident to the right Homeric one. Homeric allusions and quotations demonstrate the deep learning of all the novelists.
In “Ekphrasis in the Ancient Novel,” Angela Holzmeister considers how ekphrasis acts and interacts in the novel, in some cases behaving as if it were a character or a hero (in a Bakhtinian sense) of the story. She relies on the discussions of ekphrasis in the Progymnasmata, which, though they do not mention the novels, nevertheless provide the earliest material on the subject of ekphrasis applied to the classics (e.g. Homer and Herodotus). Examinations of the use of ekphrasis in the novels at first were limited to digressions on pieces of jewelry or works of art. However, more recent scholarship shows appreciation for how ekphrasis can add meaning to an episode, even to the main plot, especially for alert readers able to recognize the deeper significance that casual readers take only as a pleasant digression. Starting with Daphnis and Chloe—the whole story is an ekphrasis—Holzmeister looks at how scholars have advanced our understanding of the role of ekphrasis in the ancient novel.
The final section, “Themes and Topics,” covers areas of interest that overlap or intersect with ancient novels. Barry Baldwin starts with the chapter “Miscellanea Petroniana: A Petronian Enthusiast’s Thoughts and Reviews,” which leads the reader through a series of reviews of recent and not-so-recent books that translate, allude to, directly reference, and even turn Petronius himself into the stuff of novels. Two examples serve to represent the lot: Baldwin’s review of Jeffrey Henderson’s The Satyrica and the Greek Novel: Revisions and Some Open Questions (2010), which Baldwin calls “The Dating Game,” teems with knowledge worth knowing about Petronius and the Satyricon, and with references to relevant interpretations and scholarship. Baldwin’s review of Jesse Browner’s The Uncertain Hour (2007), a novel with Petronius as the subject, notes the good and bad and concludes that the work is “a good idea not always good in execution, hence for verdict fall back on Punch’s venerable ‘Curate’s Egg.’” Each review or note is worth reading for the depth of knowledge that Baldwin has to share.
In “Love, Myth, and Ritual: The Mythic Dimension and Adolescence in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe,” Anton Bierl analyzes Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe as myth, complete with the functions that psychoanalytical theories ascribe to myth. Longus weaves into his written narrative the anxiety that accompanies young love, and the process of moving from childhood to adulthood is similar to a dream sequence. Longus is steeped in pastoral tradition and motifs dating back to Theocritus: by turning his novel into a myth, he creates a coming-of-age story that is appropriate to his own age and, at the same time, timeless.
Ellen Finkelpearl applies a feminist approach in interpreting the power, self-composure, and the abundance of commonsense of the female characters in ancient novels in “Gender in the Ancient Novel.” According to Finkelpearl, female characters are the stars of the ancient novels. The novels themselves subvert male expectations of gender roles by presenting strong, capable women whose wits steal the show and save the day. Heroines of the novels are proof that powerful female role models existed beyond the imperial household.
Sophie Lalanne applies her research in education, rites of passage, and gender roles to this analysis of the five canonical Greek novels and the paradigmatic influence they exerted on society in “Education as Construction of Gender Roles in the Greek Novels.” In general, the hero and heroine tend to be coevals, busy learning lessons together on how to be functioning adults. Not surprisingly, heroines receive less education than their male counterparts; males as a matter of course receive the best upper-class education to become leaders, while females are taught ultimately to play a passive role and be obedient to males. According to Lalanne, the rites of passage that heroes and heroines undergo—separation, liminality, and reintegration—reinforce the clearly defined gender roles.
In “Greek Love in the Greek Novel,” John Makowski looks at the nature of same-sex eros in the novels and notes that while heterosexual, romantic love that results in marriage is the main focus of ancient Greek novels, homoerotic love nevertheless finds a place. There are three episodes of homoerotic love in Xenophon’s Ephesiaka and Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon that follow the conventional pattern of Greek pederasty and mirror the love of the main heterosexual couple. The fact that the men in homoerotic relationships help the hero and heroine achieve their romantic ends suggests that their homoerotic relationships will enjoy similar longevity. Gnathon in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, while not in a committed same-sex relationship, nevertheless assists the hero and heroine in finding their marriage. Far from being downgraded in favor of heterosexual love, homosexual characters contribute meaningfully to these narratives.
Claudio Moreschini’s “Latin Culture in the Second Century AD,” offers a broader context for the intellectual world of the ancient novel by discussing Latin authors whose writings coincide with the Second Sophistic and who frequently confront the notion of Greek literary superiority. The first is Fronto, tutor of Marcus Aurelius, whose letters contain consolation, historiography, sophistic encomium, and reveal a fondness for archaism and moderate obscurity of language. Aulus Gellius, like Fronto, seems to have been part of a group of erudite Romanized Africans and also shows a fondness for moderate archaism. Apuleius, another African, shares with Fronto and Gellius the privilege of an excellent education in popular areas of interests: medicine, science, music, and, of course, rhetoric. Apuleius also shares their fondness for archaism and the works of poets from early Roman times up through the Republican neoterics. All three, Fronto, Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius, quote Virgil not because they particularly liked him, but because he was in vogue. Moreschini’s chapter ends with neoteric poets and lesser-known authors of the time.
Peter von Moellendorff’s “του̑το ἀληθεύσω λέγων ὅτι ψεύδομαι—Mimet(h)ic paideia in Lucian’s True History” tackles Lucian’s hybrid approach to paedeia (“education”) in the True History, which integrates diverse mimetic processes and intensifies intellectual endeavor. Thus, the pepaideumenos (“educated man”) is a compilation of multiple allusions, and the result engages with the serious purpose of history and literature—to distinguish truth and lies: “everything is relevant if it can be worked, via association, into combinations full of tension and rich with imagery.” Allusions abound in Lucian, and the bringing together of disparate elements is a way to play with the “truth” and “lie” nature of history. Ultimately, the reader is responsible for extracting his own education from Lucian, which is worth the cost if it leads to an appreciation of Lucian’s points.
Judith Perkins focuses specifically on Christian fiction in “Reimagining Community in Christian Fictions.” Christian fiction often concentrated on the conversion of elite members of society, which Perkins argues was a reaction to changes in civic ideals and an attempt to more closely align disparate social groups. In particular, the Acts of the Apostles seek to co-opt euergetic munificence in the form of alms giving, especially from nouveau riche Christian benefactors. Heroes in the Greek novels lose but regain their fortunes and status, and there is no suggestion of finding unity among the different social classes. Such unity, however, was important in Christian fiction, and generosity to the poor was one of many ways to bring together the elite and lower classes.
In “The Poetics of Old Wives’ Tales, or Apuleius and the Philosophical Novel,” Stefan Tilg looks at the story of Cupid and Psyche, which comprises two books for an unusually lengthy digression in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. The story is narrated by an old woman who is denigrated as feeble and bibulous but who nevertheless is able to console a young, captured woman with this tale of love lost and regained. After examining other interpretations of this instance of an “old wife” telling what amounts to an old wives’ tale, Tilg concludes that Apuleius’ narrator is designed to parody Plato and his philosophy, in particular the Gorgias and Symposium. For example, Psyche’s curiositas in Apuleius recalls the πολυπραγμονει̑ν (“busybody-ness”) that Socrates in the Gorgias argues the wise man must avoid, while the story about love (especially Cupid) that the old woman tells connects her to Diotima in the Symposium. Tilg also shows that the philosophical implications in using an old woman as a narrator extend to other novels as well.
Martin Winkler’s “Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus: Between Aristotle and Hitchcock” compares elements of the unexpected in the ancient novel and the modern cinema with an emphasis on the similar shock value they produce. Winkler notes that fiction relies on implausible or nearly impossible plot turns to ensure emotional involvement, in which Aristotle preferred probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities. Fake deaths and surprising returns are common fare in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, startling audiences through narrative in much the same way that Hitchcock’s shocking death of Marion Crane startled viewers when Psycho debuted. Affinities between classical textual and modern visual narratives are numerous, as Winkler demonstrates.
Maria Pia Pattoni uses Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe to examine reception studies in “Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe: Literary Transmission and Reception.” She focuses on the reception of Longus in literature from the rediscovery of his text in the Renaissance to modern times. Early on, Longus was mostly read in the translations of Jacques Amyot, Lorenzo Gambara, Angel Day, and Annibal Caro, who tended to insert their own artistic stamps and imitations of the genre. After a brief period of obscurity from lack of interest, Longus and pastoral in general found new admirers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Pattoni discusses the following authors as having been influenced by Longus: Rémy Belleau, Tasso, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Goethe, George Sand, and Mishima.