This volume explores how the five canonical Greek novels and Lucian's True Histories relate to epic, lyric and dramatic poetry from Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic times, in four key aspects (and sections): integration of poetic images and figures in fictional narrative; games of re-writing and re-reading; effects of rhythm, prosody and structures; the notion of fiction in novels and poems. The volume brings together seventeen studies, all but one in French (E. Bowie's is published in English), all but three by academics working in French institutions (except E. Bowie from the University of Oxford, and M. Steinrück and A.-I. Muñoz from the Université de Fribourg). They are the written versions of the papers given at the conference of the same title in Nice, March 2013.
Seven of the articles discuss the presence of poetic forms and images in the novels. This ranges from the broad structures of the novels to the insertion of certain poetic images or forms traditionally associated with the novel. As for the broad layout of the novels, A.-I. Muñoz reads Books 3–5 of Achilles Tatius as a game of inversion of the traditional structure of tragedy, but some poetic elements also affect the overall construction of the novels.
Thus, according to G. Rainart, Heliodorus’ insertion of oracular pastiches (esp. in Delphic style) gives a narrative structure to the novel, informing the reader of what is to follow and creating suspense. Though historically implausible, Heliodorus’ oracles fit the fictional context of the novel because it is set in a distant, idealised past. Heliodorus may have read Plutarch and Pausanias’ descriptions of Delphi. The oracles are ambivalent in that they advertise themselves both as literary and as religious pieces of writing: all of them add a religious dimension to the text, but play different literary games. For example, the two spontaneous oracles (2.26; 2.35) are received by the crowd as in a theatrical setting.
M. Clo notes that the musical instruments frequently mentioned in the novel evoke different poetic modes: the aulos evokes the poetic texts it normally accompanies; the salpinx has a tragic and epic dimension; the syrinx has poetic undertones, and its fabrication in Daphnis and Chloe illustrates the development of the poetic voice of its characters. The musical power of nature (winds, rivers, Echo) becomes a poetic symbol.
R. Brèthes uncovers the (Ovidian) elegiac hypotext of Leucippe and Clitophon. Clitophon's unravelling of his erotic strategies in his father's house is compared to the discussion of how and where to seduce a maiden in the Ars amatoria. A comparison of the novel to its didactic counterpart elucidates the novelistic (meta)poetics. Being in love means above all constructing a discourse on love that questions the notions of fiction and reality, and invites readers/listeners to take part in a literary game and to become the heroes of their own adventures as they construct their own erotic discourse.
The novelists elaborate metaphors and comparisons, both considered more appropriate for poetry, but used for sparkle in prose. J.-P. Guez notes that Chariton favours comparisons, clustered in character portraits, descriptions of love and descriptions of conflict. They can be treated as a metatextual reference to Homeric poetry, which allows the novelist to vindicate Homer as a model and rival and illustrates his poetic ambitions. By contrast, Achilles Tatius makes frequent use of complex paradoxical metaphors in the service of the aesthetics of surprise in all sorts of secondary narratives, where they enhance the animation of the scene, call attention to their own length and density and do not respect the rule that the link between the metaphorical term and its object needs to be a close one.
F. Létoublon's paper is dedicated to the poetic metaphors of the novels. In the construction of Eros in the five canonical novels the lyrical poets resonate in the development of mythological paradigms (visual and textual narratives enhance the arguments and the plot) and of metaphorical vocabulary (athletic exploits and combat of love).
A second group of articles discusses the direct or notional influence of certain poets on the novelists, with Homer receiving the expected preferential treatment. É. Romieux-Brun surveys how Chariton uses citations of passages from the Iliad on Achilles and Hector to illustrate Chaereas’ moral evolution (as a heroic character and in his mastering of speech), applying the moral reading of Homer that became frequent in imperial times (e.g. Plutarch, How to read the poets). J. Peigney discusses two comparisons between human and animal behaviour in the Aethiopica: in 2.10.5–9 Cnemon and Thermouthis eat like Homeric jackals and wolves; in 2.22.4 Calasiris is bereft of his children like a bird whose nest has been ravaged by a snake (Il. 2.308–16). In both cases Heliodorus creates a lattice of Homeric references that illustrate the similarities and differences with the Homeric intertext. D. Kasprzyk explores how Heliodorus combines the Homeric and Pindaric traditions to create the narrative of the athletic games in Book 4 of his novel.
Two papers discuss the influence of Alexandrian poetry on Leucippe and Clitophon. C. Cusset and C. Vieilleville discuss Moschus’ description of Io's basket as an example of the Alexandrian mythological manner: the ekphrasis becomes the locus of metapoetic evocations and is constantly linked to the main narrative. Achilles’ initial description of a painting of Europa announces a similar poetic and narrative approach, one that becomes more ambiguous and complicated when Leucippe is compared at her first appearance not to Europa, but to the similar figure of Selene.
A. Billault explores the aspects of Leucippe and Clitophon in which Achilles Tatius is close to the Hellenistic poets: his tendency to associate the adventures of his characters with mythology (the story of Daphne and Apollo serves Clitophon as a model), his sense of humour in representing his characters (Asclepiades of Samos, Ep. 11; Callimachus, Ep. 52; Theocr. Id. 3) and discourses on love (Ach. Tat. 2.3 ~ Theocr. Id. 1; Ach. Tat. 2.9.2 ~ Theocr. Id. 7.69–70; Ach. Tat. 5.6.2-3 ~ Posidippus, Ep. 115).
Five papers have a more technical outlook. Two deal with rhythm. Biraud's painstaking analysis of the stress-based clausulae in the speech of Philetas (Daphnis and Chloe 2.3–7) concludes that Eros’ speech is an ode in melê apolelumena (iambic metres and cola with formal echoes between the beginnings and ends of the series of strophes and numerical balance between the series of strophes). On the contrary, in the passages where Philetas discusses his past the use of old-fashioned rhythms gives the text a poetic dimension.
Noting that prose rhythm is to be seen as a legacy of the poetic tradition, M. Steinrück analyses two long passages of the Aethiopica (1.1.1–1.3.4; 6.14.2–6.15.5), comparing free indirect speech and prose rhythm, as an illustration of the phenomenon of concomitance, rare in earlier times, but a common characteristic of imperial and late-antique literature.
E. Bowie surveys the usage of poetic vocabulary in Longus and, with smaller samples, in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus. Words found only or predominantly in poetry in earlier periods do not have a strong presence in Longus: he may be writing a poetic sort of prose in terms of Theocritean subject matter, rhythmical sentences and a preference for coordination over subordination, but the language he uses in order to achieve this is predominantly the language of prose, not that of poetry (even with the caveat of the amount of poetry written before ad 200 that is now lost). Very few words in Achilles Tatius’ and Heliodorus’ opening chapters seem to have a claim to be poetic, and none of these is used by Homer, Hesiod or Pindar. In the second century ad the vocabularies of prose and poetry continued to be distinct.
C. Kossaifi and Briand propose new methodological approaches. Kossaifi explores the use of an oblique-look perspective and anamorphosis (a distorted perspective that requires the viewer to use a special device or a specific vantage point to reconstitute an image – for example, to ‘see’ the skull in Holbein's Ambassadors) in the creation of fiction by Theocritus, Ovid and Longus. Longus learns from Theocritus to request from his readers an oblique approach, a poetics of abstraction, the evaluation of optical illusions and a philosophy of artificial reality, all of which create his fiction, apparently simple, but in fact the product of a complex perspective. Kossaifi focuses in particular on the embedded narratives of Phatta, Syrinx and Echo and their capacity to generate fiction.
Briand combines Aristotelian theory (the pair poiesis/historia from Poetics 9) and modern literary theory of genre transgression, and logical and pragmatic approaches to fiction. The ancient novel is seen as a genre of poiesis that exists in the tension between narrative and description (ekphrasis).
Finally, H. Frangoulis’ paper could have been printed as an epilogue, since it reverts the direction of the rest: it argues that Nonnos of Panopolis uses a number of novelistic techniques in his Dionysiaca when he enriches the narrative of the poem with parallel episodes (e.g. Calamos and Carpos in Book 11, the novella of Morrheus and Chalcomede in Books 33–5), gnomic sentences on love and scientific notes. Frangoulis analyses with some detail how Nonnus’ narrative choices inform his selection and manipulation of the elements of the novelistic passages in which he seeks inspiration.
The volume succeeds in promoting a view of the novel at the centre of complex generic interfaces. The editors should be commended for putting together a volume full of perceptive and penetrating readings, which, however, would have benefited from clearer connections between related papers.
