The contact zones between the Greco-Roman world and the Near East represent one of the most exciting and fast-moving areas of ancient-world studies. This new collection of essays, by world-renowned experts (and some new voices) in classical, Jewish, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Persian literature, focuses specifically on prose fiction, or 'the ancient novel'. Twenty chapters either offer fresh readings - from an intercultural perspective - of familiar texts (such as the biblical Esther and Ecclesiastes, Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian Story and Dictys of Crete's Journal), or introduce material that may be new to many readers: from demotic Egyptian papyri through old Avestan hymns to a Turkic translation of the Life of Aesop. The volume also considers issues of methodology and the history of scholarship on the topic. A concluding section deals with the question of how narratives, patterns and motifs may have come to be transmitted between cultures.
Edited by:
Tim Whitmarsh (University of Oxford),
Stuart Thomson (Corpus Christi College,
Oxford)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 228mm,
Width: 151mm,
Spine: 23mm
Weight: 590g
ISBN: 9781107543003
ISBN 10: 1107543002
Pages: 412
Publication Date: 09 July 2015
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
1. The romance between Greece and the East Tim Whitmarsh; Part I. Egyptians: 2. Greek fiction and Egyptian fiction: are they related, and, if so, how? Ian Rutherford; 3. Manetho John Dillery; 4. Imitatio Alexandri in Egyptian literary tradition Kim Ryholt; 5. Divine anger management: the Greek version of the myth of the sun's eye (P.Lond.Lit. 192) Stephanie West; 6. Fictions of cultural authority Susan Stephens; Part II. Mesopotamians and Iranians: 7. Berossus Johannes Haubold; 8. The Greek novel Ninus and Semiramis: its background in Assyrian and Seleucid history and monuments Stephanie Dalley; 9. Ctesias, the Achaemenid court, and the history of the Greek novel Josef Wiesehöfer; 10. Iskander and the idea of Iran Daniel Selden; Part III. Jews and Phoenicians: 11. Josephus' Esther and Diaspora Judaism Emily Kneebone; 12. The eastern king in the Hebrew Bible: novelistic motifs in early Jewish literature Jennie Barbour; 13. 'Lost in translation'? The Phoenician Journal of Dictys of Crete Karen Ní Mheallaigh; 14. Milesiae Punicae: how Punic was Apuleius? Stephen Harrison; Part IV. Anatolians: 15. The victory of Greek Ionia in Xenophon's Ephesiaca Aldo Tagliabue; 16. Milesian tales Ewen Bowie; Part V. Transmission and Reception: 17. Does triviality translate? The Life of Aesop travels east Pavlos Avlamis; 18. Mime and the romance Ruth Webb; 19. Orality, folktales, and the cross-cultural transmission of narrative Larry Kim; 20. History, empire and the novel: Pierre-Daniel Huet and the origins of the romance Phiroze Vasunia.
Tim Whitmarsh is Professor of Ancient Literatures and E. P. Warren Praelector, Fellow and Tutor in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has published widely on ancient prose fiction, including Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance (Cambridge, 2011), and edited The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel (Cambridge, 2008). He is currently writing a book on religious scepticism in antiquity. Stuart Thomson is a doctoral student at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, specialising on Clement of Alexandria.
