Inventing the Novel: Bakhtin and Petronius Face to Face (Classics in Theory Series)

Inventing the Novel uses the work of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) to explore the ancient origins of the modern novel. The analysis focuses on one of the most elusive works of classical antiquity, the Satyrica , written by Nero's courtier, Petronius Arbiter (whose singular suicide, described by Tacitus, is as famous as his novel). Petronius was the most lauded ancient novelist of the twentieth century and the Satyrica served as the original model for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), as well as providing the epigraph for T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922), and the basis for Fellini Satyricon (1969). Bakhtin's work on the novel was deeply informed by his philosophical views: if, as a phenomenologist, he is a philosopher of consciousness, as a student of the novel, he is a philosopher of the history of consciousness, and it is the role of the novel in this history that held his attention. This volume seeks to lay out an argument in four parts that supports Bakhtin's sweeping assertion that the Satyrica plays an "immense" role in the history of the novel, beginning in Chapter 1 with his equally striking claim that the novel originates as a new way of representing time and proceeding to the question of polyphony in Petronius and the ancient novel. Cover Inventing the Novel: Bakhtin and Petronius Face to Face Copyright Dedication ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CONTENTS Prologue: The Argument Introduction: Bakhtin and Petronius Lost and Found Digression: Biographical Syncrisis of Bakhtin and Petronius Back to Bakhtin Starting Points Toward a Final Vocabulary Thinking Circles around Bakhtin The Utterance 1: Inventing the Novel: The Bakhtinian Model 2: Mapping Time and Space in Ancient Fiction: Toward An Historical Poetics Chronotopics ADVENTURE-TIME CHRONOTOPES IN ROMAN FICTION 3: The Poetics of Genre: Bakhtin/Menippus/Petronius Bakhtin on the Seriocomic Epic and Novel: A Digression Bakhtin and Menippus 4: Discourse in a Novel Toward a Typology of Narrative Discourse: Plato and Bakhtin Trimalchio’s Last Words Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée Trimalchio’s Double-Voiced Discourse: The Riddle of the Sibyl Fortunata’s Voice: On the Boundaries of Discourse What Does Polyphony Sound Like? ANCIENT EXAMPLES? Epilogue: The Last Word Appendices APPENDIX A BAKHTIN AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE FACT–VALUE DICHOTOMY APPENDIX B THE WRATH OF HERMEROS APPENDIX C NOMEN OMEN: EUMOLPUS’S NAME AND DISCOURSE APPENDIX D PETRONIUS’S TITLE AS DISCOURSE WORKS CITED Works by Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circle Other Sources INDEX 'Inventing the Novel' uses the work of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin to explore the ancient origins of the modern novel, focusing on one of classical antiquity's most elusive works, Petronius' Satyrica, and arguing in support of Bakhtin's sweeping claim that it plays an 'immense' role in the history of the novel __Inventing the Novel____Satyrica____Satyrica____The Great Gatsby____The Waste Land____Fellini Satyricon____Satyrica__