These questions form the core of my current research as part of the Novel Echoes project. How then should we investigate the early reception history of the ancient novel? This epitomizes the paradox of the ancient novel’s reception: on the one hand, the explicit mentions of the texts are often thin, partial, and focus on just one facet of this complex genre on the other, the subtler evidence of their influence on hagiography and later genres suggests a much more multifaceted reception. But this is just one mention of one now-lost novel, not of the genre as a whole, and given the genre’s influence on religious hagiography, this cannot be the whole story. As such, this has often been interpreted as a paradigmatic example of how the ancient novels were perceived in late antiquity – essentially as a kind of low-rent pornography. We know that an Iamblichus, said in one version of his authorial biography to be a Syrian, wrote a novel called the Babyloniaka ( Babylonian Stories), which seems to have been quite racy. But the reference to the Syrian Iamblichus suggests that Priscianus is talking about ancient novels. Ewen Bowie has ingeniously suggested it might be a corruption for Heliodorus, author of the Aithiopika ( Ethiopian Stories), but given how chaste this novel is by comparison to the others, it seems a bit of a stretch. It’s not clear who Philip of Amphipolis or Herodian are. It is good to use readings that draw the soul towards pleasure, like those of Philip of Amphipolis or of Herodian or undoubtedly of the Syrian Iamblichus, or to others that pleasantly narrate erotic tales ( Euporista 2.11.34, 133 Rose) ![]() My personal favourite is Theodorus Priscianus, a late fourth/early fifth-century doctor who offers an unusual cure for impotence. They suggest that the novels were considered low-brow, even obscene. The extant testimonia to the novels in the centuries after their composition are problematic. Proving this, however, is a different matter. The latest ancient novel dates from the 4 th century CE at the latest, but the influence of the novels on hagiography, medieval romances, and early modern novels make it clear that they held significant appeal in the centuries after they were composed. But our evidence for who read novels and why in antiquity is extremely sketchy. If we wanted to ask these questions about the modern world, there’d be a simple answer: ask the readers of novels and see what they say. If ancient readers did not have a fixed concept of novels or a lot of examples to establish these conventions, would they automatically think of novelistic fiction as something natural and normal? Or would it be something more complex, something they had to confront and grapple with? ![]() Modern readers expect novels to be fictional because of our familiarity with the conventions of the genre. The term novel is not an ancient one, and has come down to us from a seventeenth century French theorist, Pierre-Daniel Huet, whose use of the word roman for both ancient and early modern fictions has encouraged this kind of transference between ancient and modern novels. The texts known in modern scholarship as ancient novels are not clearly identified in antiquity, and there is a long debate about exactly how firmly ancient readers categorised them as a single genre across their heyday in the 1 st-4 th century CE. Now more than ever, novels are a fairly universal way of distracting ourselves from the current social and political situation, entertaining ourselves, and comforting ourselves with fiction.īut if you ask this question about antiquity, the answer looks quite different. During the lockdown prompted by Covid-19, sales of fiction in the UK have surged, and customers seem to be shunning dystopian stories for ones which can comfort, soothe, and entertain us through this unusual period. ![]() There are so many different and diverse novels in the modern world, after all, that it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t one to appeal to everyone’s taste. Who reads novels, and why? If you ask most people this question, they’ll likely give you a strange look as if it’s a trick question. written by Dr Claire Rachel Jackson, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Novel Echoes research group
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |