The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman NovelTim Whitmarsh The Greek and Roman novels of Petronius, Apuleius, Longus, Heliodorus and others have been cherished for millennia, but never more so than now. The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel contains nineteen original essays by an international cast of experts in the field. The emphasis is upon the critical interpretation of the texts within historical settings, both in antiquity and in the later generations that have been and continue to be inspired by them. All the central issues of current scholarship are addressed: sexuality, cultural identity, class, religion, politics, narrative, style, readership and much more. Four sections cover cultural context of the novels, their contents, literary form, and their reception in classical antiquity and beyond. Each chapter includes guidance on further reading. This collection will be essential for scholars and students, as well as for others who want an up-to-date, accessible introduction into this exhilarating material. |
Contents
| 17 | |
Section 2 | 39 |
Section 3 | 56 |
Section 4 | 72 |
Section 5 | 91 |
Section 6 | 109 |
Section 7 | 127 |
Section 8 | 145 |
Section 10 | 185 |
Section 11 | 201 |
Section 12 | 218 |
Section 13 | 237 |
Section 14 | 261 |
Section 15 | 272 |
Section 16 | 299 |
Section 17 | 321 |
Section 9 | 162 |
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Common terms and phrases
Achilles Tatius adventure Alexander Alexander Romance allusion ancient Greek novels ancient novel Anthia and Habrocomes Antonius Diogenes Apollonius Apuleius Bakhtin body Bowie Calasiris Callirhoe century Chaereas characters Charicleia and Theagenes Chariton classical comic contemporary cultural Cupid and Psyche Daphnis and Chloe discussion Egyptian elite Encolpius Ephesus epic episode Eros erotic Ethiopian Eumolpus example Fusillo genre Goldhill Greek romance Hägg Harrison Heliodorus hero Herodotus heroine Homer Hunter Iamblichus identity imperial intertextual Isis Latin Leucippe and Clitophon literary literature Longus lovers Lucian Lucius manuscripts marriage Metamorphoses Milesian Milesian tales modern moral Morgan motifs narrative narrator novelists Odysseus Odyssey Persian Petronius Philostratus Photius plot political prose fiction protagonist readers readership rhetoric role Roman novels Rome satire Satyrica scene sexual social sophisticated spectacle status Stephens and Winkler story style tale temporal texts theme tradition translation Trimalchio volume Whitmarsh writing Xenophon
Popular passages
Page 311 - If she have dealt hardly with me, why extol you so much my birth ? If Nature bear no sway, why use you this adulation ? If Nature work the effect, what booteth any education ? If Nature be of strength or force, what availeth discipline or nurture ? If of none, what helpeth Nature...
Page 270 - And I think that this last chapter will prove very agreeable to its readers: it cleanses away the grim events of the earlier ones. There will be no more pirates or slavery or lawsuits or fighting or suicide or wars or conquests; now there will be lawful love and sanctioned marriage.
Page 208 - The novel parodies other genres (precisely in their role as genres); it exposes the conventionality of their forms and their language; it squeezes out some genres and incorporates others into its own peculiar structure, reformulating and re-accentuating them.
Page 234 - my contemporaries," "my time" — all these concepts were originally the objects of ambivalent laughter, at the same time cheerful and annihilating. It is precisely here that a fundamentally new attitude toward language and toward the word is generated. Alongside direct representation — laughing at living reality — there flourish parody and travesty of all high genres and of all lofty models embodied in national myth. The "absolute past...
Page 216 - Epist. ad Fam. 5. 12. 4, on writing history: " For nothing is so suited to the delight of the reader as are shifting circumstances and the vicissitudes of fortune. Concerning our author's doctrine of narratio as reflecting Hellenistic ideas on historiography and story writing, see 24 tragedies.
Page 216 - ... convenient practice/ for handling the first two types more 13 advantageously in actual causes. Of such narratives there are two kinds : one based on the facts, the other on the persons.? The kind of narrative based on the exposition of the facts presents three forms : legendary, historical, and realistic. The legendary tale comprises events neither true nor probable, like those transmitted by f The reference is to the progymnasmata (praeeXercitimenta).
Page 203 - Petronius' work, is— in the other specimens and fragments that have come down to us— so crammed with magic, adventure, and mythology, so overburdened with erotic detail, that it cannot possibly be considered an imitation of everyday life as it existed at the time— quite apart from the unrealistic and rhetorical stylization of its language.