Modern Literary Theory And The Ancient Novel

In the Greek world under the Roman Empire, the tradition of rhetorical learning reached its heyday in the second century A.D., with the cultural movement named as “Second Sophistic”. Despite the emphasis on rhetoric, literary culture lato senso was was also part of it, granting a special place to poetics and literary criticism. In the wake of this hermeneutical and interdisciplinary approach, the papers assembled in this volume explore signi cant issues, which are linked to the narrative structure of the ancient novel and to the tradition of rhetorical training, both envisaged as a web of well-constructed narrative devices.

This book provides students and scholars of classical literature with a practical guide to modern literary theory and criticism. Using a clear and concise approach, it navigates readers through various theoretical approaches, including Russian Formalism, structuralism, deconstruction, gender studies, and New Historicism. Applies theoretical approaches to examples from ancient literature Extensive bibliographies and index make it a valuable resource for scholars in the field

This companion addresses a topic of continuing contemporary relevance, both cultural and literary. Offers both a wide-ranging exploration of the classical novel of antiquity and a wealth of close literary analysis Brings together the most up-to-date international scholarship on the ancient novel, including fresh new academic voices Includes focused chapters on individual classical authors, such as Petronius, Xenophon and Apuleius, as well as a wide-ranging thematic analysis Addresses perplexing questions concerning authorial expression and readership of the ancient novel form Provides an accomplished introduction to a genre with a rising profile

Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction provides an accessible overview of major figures and movements in literary theory and criticism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It is designed for students at the undergraduate level or for others needing a broad synthesis of the long history of literary theory. An introductory chapter provides an overview of some of the major issues within literary theory and criticism; further chapters survey theory and criticism in antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth century. For twentieth- and twenty-first-century theory, the discussion is subdivided into separate chapters on formalist, historicist, political, and psychoanalytic approaches. The final chapter applies a variety of theoretical concepts and approaches to two famous works of literature: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

This collection of wide-ranging essays offers a fascinating overview of current scholarly approaches to the ancient novel and related texts. These are discussed in their literary, cultural and social context, and as sources of inspiration for Byzantine and modern fiction.

"The study of the reception of the ancient novel and of its literary and cultural heritage is one of the most appealing issues in the story of this literary genre. In no other genre has the vitality of classical tradition manifested itself in such a lasting and versatile manner as in the novel. However, this unifying, centripetal quality also worked in an opposite direction, spreading to and contaminating future literatures. Over the centuries, from Antiquity to the present time there have been many authors who drew inspiration from the Greek and Roman novels or used them as models, from Cervantes to Shakespeare, Sydney or Racine, not to mention the profound influence these texts exercised on, for instance, sixteenth-to eighteenth-century Italian, Portuguese and Spanish literature. Volume I is divided into sections that follow a chronological order, while Volume II deals with the reception of the ancient novel in literature and art. The first volume brings together an international group of scholars whose main aim is to analyse the survival of the ancient novel in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in the 17th and 18th centuries, and in the modern era. The contributors to the second volume have undertaken the task of discussing the survival of the ancient novel in the visual arts, in literature and in the performative arts. The papers assembled in these two volumes on reception are at the forefront of scholarship in the field and will stimulate scholarly research on the ancient novel and its influence over the centuries up to modern times, thus enriching not only Classics but also modern languages and literatures, cultural history, literary theory and comparative literature."--

In The Search for the Ancient Novel Tatum brings together a distinguished group of scholars to examine every aspect of ancient Greek and Roman novelists--the recovery of their texts, their reception, ancient and modern, and their place in literary theory and history. The contributors explore subjects ranging from antiquity to the present, from the anonymous authors of Apollonius King of Tyre and The Apochryphal Acts of Peter to Tasso, Cervantes, and Rabelais, from Lucian, Heliodorus, and Petronius to Chrétien de Troye and Samuel Richardson.

An important debate in modern literary criticism concerns the exact relationship between the ancient epic and the novel. Both the epic and the most ambitious modern novels are large-scale attempts to present a comprehensive view of the world through the experience of a representative hero. However, in the older tradition the hero stood for the aspirations and highest ideals of his society. The protagonist of the modern novel is usually at odds with that society, whether as exile, active rebel, or antagonistic critic. In Novel Practices, the distinguished literary scholar Eugene Goodheart surveys a representative selection of modern novelists tracing how the epic impulse has been reshaped under the conditions of modernity.Goodheart describes how George Eliot and James Joyce's comprehensive artistic creation enabled them to demonstrate a mastery of the world unattainable to their thwarted, flawed, or feckless heroes and heroines. Works such as Middlemarch and Ulysses, encyclopedic in their inclusiveness, share an ambitious scope that is virtually synonymous with epic. Goodheart shows that even in shorter works, such as James's The Beast in the Jungle and Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier, the standard of the epic hero acts as an ironic subtext. A chapter on Thomas Mann provides a European perspective, enacting conflict between self and society through a dramatized contest of ideas. Goodheart explores ambiguities of point of view as characteristic of modern uncertainty: how much authority or reliability should the reader concede to the narrator? What is the relationship between the narrator and the author? These and related questions are addressed in chapters on Lawrence, James, Bellow, Woolf, and Roth, which also deal with the place of literary biography in understanding fiction.Goodheart's approach centers on fiction, and although he takes cognizance of the critical theory of the past several decades, he nevertheless emphasizes the centrality of the author and authorial intention. Novel Practices will be essential reading for students of literature, culture, and intellectual history.