The ancient novel and beyond : [International Conference on the Ancient Novel (Groningen, July 2000)

This work comprises the revised versions of selected papers read at the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (Groningen, July 2000). The essays combine judicious use of literary theory with traditional scholarship, and examines the ancient novels and related texts. Table of Contents 8 Preface 12 Acknowledgements 22 PART ONE: THE ANCIENT NOVEL IN CONTEXT 24 Alexander the Great in the Arabic Tradition 26 ‘The Last Days of Alexander’ in an Arabic Popular Romance of Al-Iskandar 46 Lucius and Aesop Gain a Voice: Apul. Met. 11.1-2 and Vita Aesopi 7 60 The Grand Vizier, the Prophet, and the Satirist. Transformations of the Oriental Ahiqar Romance in Ancient Prose Fiction 76 Living Portraits and Sculpted Bodies in Chariton’s Theater of Romance 94 Spectator and Spectacle in Apuleius 108 Plato’s Dream: Philosophy and Fiction in the Theaetetus 124 Fiction as a Discourse of Philosophy in Lucian’s Verae Historiae 138 The Representation of Violence in the Greek Novels and Martyr Accounts 152 Three Death Scenes in Apollonius of Tyre 166 PART TWO: THE ANCIENT NOVEL IN FOCUS 182 Swordplay - Wordplay: Phraseology of Fiction in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 184 Nymphs, Neighbours and Narrators: a Narratological Approach to Longus 194 Reading for Pleasure: Narrative, Irony, and Eroticism in Achilles Tatius 214 The Winged Ass. Intertextuality and Narration in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 230 Tlepolemus the Spectral Spouse 242 Epic Extremities: The Openings and Closures of Books in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 262 In mediis rebus: Beginning Again in the Middle of the Ancient Novel 278 La lettre dans le roman grec ou les liaisons dangereuses 294 The Role of Inscriptions in Greco-Roman Novels 312 Strategies of Authentication in Ancient Popular Literature 324 PART THREE: BEYOND THE ANCIENT NOVEL 338 Archaic Iambos and Greek Novel: A Possible Connection 340 Resistant (and enabling) Reading: Petronius’ Satyricon and Latin Love Elegy 352 La mise en scène déclamatoire chez les romanciers latins 368 Der byzantinische Roman des 12. Jahrhunderts als Spiegel des zeitgenössischen Literaturbetriebs 380 Static Imitation or Creative Transformation? Achilles Tatius in Hysmine & Hysminias 394 The ‘Entführung aus dem Serail’-motif in the Byzantine (vernacular) Romances 404 Staging the Fringe Before Shakespeare: Hans Sachs and the Ancient Novel 416 Heliodor, Mademoiselle de Scudéry und Umberto Eco: Lektüren des Liebesromans in L’isola del giorno prima 424 From Petronius to Petrolio: Satyricon as a Model-Experimental Novel 436 Myths of Person and Place: the Search for a Model for the Ancient Greek Novel 448 Notes on contributors 466 Abbreviations 472 General bibliography 473 Index 508 A 508 B 508 C 508 D 509 E 509 F 509 G 509 H 509 I 509 K 509 L 510 M 510 N 510 O 510 P 510 Q 511 R 511 S 511 T 511 U 511 V 511 W 512 X 512 Z 512

This volume comprises the revised versions of selected papers read at the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (Groningen, July 2000). The papers cover a wide range of scholarly issues that were prominent in the programme of the conference, and feature the most recent approaches to research on the ancient novel.
The essays combine judicious use of literary theory with traditional scholarship, and examine the ancient novels and related texts, such as Oriental tales and Christian narrative, both in their larger, literary, cultural and social context, and as sources of inspiration for Byzantine and modern fiction. This book is important not only for classicists and literary historians, but also for a general public of those interested in narrative fiction.