PETRONIAN SOCIETY NEWSLETTER, Articles & Reviews

Vines, M. E., The Problem of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2002) xii + 220 pp. € 80.00 / US$ 108.00. ISBN 978–90–04–12693–0. Reviewed by Paul M. Fullmer, Lebanon Valley College.

The past decade of professional biblical scholarship has witnessed a marked interested in the literary theories of Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975). At a recent meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I joined a lively breakfast gathering of the section dedicated to “Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination” attended by 60–80 professionals in biblical studies, predominately students of the Hebrew Bible. One of the members of the steering committee for that meeting was Michael E. Vines, whose study, The Problem of the Markan Genre, applies Bakhtin’s theories to a consideration of the centuries-old problem of determining the genre of the Gospel of Mark.

A thorough, thoughtful, and masterful summary of the history of approaches to the problem in Chapter 1 prepares the way by narrowing the generic options. Analogical approaches—which highlight features that Mark’s Gospel shares in common with ancient Greco-Roman biographies, aretalogies, encomia, memorabilia, Socratic dialogues, Greek tragedy, or Homeric epics—result in similarities of purpose, method, and type of material which Vines considers to be too general. He prefers, in the end, studies such as those by Mary Ann Tolbert which give more weight to similarities in rhetorical, stylistic, and linguistic tendencies rather than simply on the outer form of a work. Tolbert’s conclusion, however, that the Gospels are simply popular narrative is, for Vines, too broad a category to constitute a literary genre. Rather, Vines asserts that a derivational approach to the problem of Markan genre will result in an appropriately specific conclusion.

But what is a derivational approach to genre? Enter Bakhtin’s poetics. In Chapters Two and Three of his study, Vines presents a complex introduction to Bakhtin’s genre theory. Again, as in Chapter One, the treatment is thoughtful and incisive, but requires dedication on the part of the reader, who is introduced to five fundamental principles of Bakhtin’s poetics in Chapter Two: (1) unfinalizability and dialogue, (2) language and heteroglossia, (3) speech genres, (4) literary genres, and (5) chronotope. Vines then employs these concepts to a general consideration of novelization in the Hellenistic Period. However, he is quick to focus his study upon the chronotopic qualities of Greco-Roman novelistic literature, that is, those qualities which evoke a specific historical time and place, but nothing more, so that the characters act and speak for themselves. Because the idea of chronotope is Bakhtin’s primary basis for the description of genres, Vines dedicates the majority of Chapel Three to a consideration of the nature of spatial and temporal indicators in Greco-Roman biography, ancient romance, and Menippean satire.

In chapter 4, Vines compares his observations about the chronotopes of each of these three genres—biography, romance, and Menippea—to observations about the chronotope of the Gospel of Mark. Although the work demonstrates Bakhtinian theory in use and provides many interesting observations about the character of space and time in the ancient literature, it contributes to the problem of Markan genre only negatively: Vines concludes that the direct influence of any of these genres is unlikely. Only at the very end of the chapter do we return briefly to the thesis that Vines had summarily stated at the end of Chapter 1. The chronotope of the Jewish novels indicates that the Gospel of Mark is best appreciated as a Hellenistic-Jewish novel, Vines argues, noting in particular a common theology and soteriology in both the Gospel of Mark and Jewish novels: “ they [Mark and the Jewish novels] are both engaged in a similar conversation about the nature of divine presence and action in the midst of crisis. Both are convinced that God can and will save those who trust in God’s compassion and mercy.”^{^[2]}

So, Vines concludes “that the chronotope of the Gospel of Mark most closely resembles that of the Jewish novels” of the Hellenistic Period, to which he hastily adds that “this is not to deny other influences on the composition of the Gospel.”^{^[3]} Here he tips his hat to works such as Richard I. Pervo’s analysis of the genre of the biblical book of Acts which, noting the extreme diversity within both Hellenistic culture and its novelistic literature, finds the novel to be “too complex a phenomenon to be reduced to a single impetus.”^{^[4]} Indeed, Vines repeats: “In the context of the first century, it would not be surprising to find that Mark, to one degree or another, borrowed from both Greek and Jewish literary forms.”^{^[5]} Such a heavily qualified conclusion may lead one to wonder whether Vines study has solved any problem at all, particularly given that the conclusion comes without attention to the complexity of ancient novelistic literature widely recognized following the work of scholars such as Susan Stephens and John Winkler: Greco-Roman novelistic literature comprises many forms beyond biography, romance, and satire. Perhaps Tolbert’s appreciation of the Gospel as popular narrative is, in the end, solution enough to the problem of Markan genre and the attention of scholarship would be more profitably turned to considerations of specific literary characteristics within this broader context.

One might also wonder at the applicability of modern literary theories such as the idea of chronotope to historically-based questions such as the genre of a specific work of ancient literature.

However, it is the process that we appreciate in a study such as this, and Vines’ process has much to offer. His review of approaches to the problem of Markan genre is a valuable introduction for any consideration of the issue. Moreover, even the scholar who has spent a lifetime in Greco-Roman novelistic literature will benefit from many of the insights that Vines chronotopic perspective yields. I recommend the book for libraries; Brill has issued the study in paperback.

Pervo, Richard I. 1987. Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles, Philadelphia: Fortress.

Vines, Michael E. 2002. The Problem of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel, Society of Biblical Literature Academia Biblica 3, Boston and Leiden: Brill Academic.

If this title sounds familiar, it is. Aeons ago (PSN 12, 1981, 5), answering a call from Raymond Astbury (PSN 10, 1979, 4), I collected Petronian allusions in the later volumes of Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. At that time, I had not seen the four volumes of Powell’s Memoirs (London, 1978–1982); anyway, they would have been beyond my remit. Now I have, and here provide their dividends.

In volume 2 (p. 31), Powell observes, apropos writing novels about elite groups that Petronius was “clearly not at all inhibited from knowing about everyday things, on account of his position as arbiter of elegance at Nero’s court.” Later, a more personal reminiscence evokes this lengthy tribute. “While speaking of books that left a mark, I should mention one that came much later, in fact not long before the outbreak of the second world war, by which time I had already written five novels myself. The Satyricon of Petronius, a name long familiar, was still unread, until, in a manner that seems to have become endemic with favourite works, I picked up a copy (sc. Burnaby’s 1694 translation, of whose physical format Powell gives a detailed account—BB) in a second-hand bookshop. After a few pages of Petronius, especially that masterpiece of characterization and dialogue, Trimalchio’s Feast, I was captivated by the genius of Nero’s more intellectual Beau Brummell (forced to suicide on falling from favour); the writer of what can reasonably be looked on as the first modern novel. The Satyricon, possibly unfinished, seems designed for reading aloud. Most of it is lost, what remains scarcely half the length of a thriller; the intention apparently a narrative of half-a-million words, say (though otherwise so different) Malory’s Morte Darthur. In the picaresque adventures of the Satyricon, the pure imaginative vision of the novelist (possibly reinforced by portraits drawn from life) is directed to the world round about the author in a manner that, even at its most grotesque, is never less than convincing; all of it to be easily equated with what is happening today. Petronius, so far as I was concerned, was probably the last writer to help form a taste still open to development.”

In volume 4 (p. 77), after rebuking D. H. Lawrence for lack of humour, “a failing rarely if ever to be found in novelists of the highest class from Petronius to Proust,” Powell goes on to this anecdote of a talk on The Novel he unwillingly gave at Cornell in 1961, saying “If I were forced to give a lecture I could do so only by including a reading of certain passages translated from the Satyricon of Petronius, as these were part of the argument in illustrating how novels are written. A search was made. It turned out that the only English translation to be found in the libraries of Cornell was a comparatively recent one rendered in Twenties gangster slang. I was told afterwards that Petronius read aloud in an English accent, and transferred to the language of an Edward G. Robinson or George Raft ganster movie, was bizarre in the extreme.”

Two questions for fellow-Petronians: is this Cornell dearth credible? Which translation did Powell use?

Back in volume 2 (p. 58), Powell may gloss that notorious passage (48. 4) in which Trimlachio brags (in H ) III bybliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam. Most editors (Bücheler, Heseltine, Müller, Smith, Warmington—not Ernout) emend the numeral from 3 to 2. I have argued more than once in print, and still believe, that 3 should be retained, the joke residing in an implied comic aposiopesis on Trimalchio’s part when he cannot dream up a plausible third library. Powell, talking in general terms, remarks “Appreciation of two arts in a discerning fashion is not at all uncommon; where three are claimed, more often than not grasp of the third shows signs of strain.”

For those who, as I do not, fancy ira Priapi as dominant plot motif, volume 4 (p. 117) provides congenial finale in Powell’s summary of his play The Garden God: “Priapus, Roman deity of Procreation and Horticulture, is by chance conjured up by a group of archaeologists excavating one of his shrines on a small Greek island. Enraged by their ineptitudes Priapus makes himself manifest. The disturbed god angrily investigates the sexual habits of those intruders, notably their failings in the light of the physical worship they owe him”—Powellese for “impotent.”

Since effulging (PSN 345, 2005, 1–2) on Horatii curiosa felicitas, I have noticed a couple of 18th-Century jests on the subject. First, Matthew Prior’s Alma:

Second, another of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (1749) to his son: “Read Dryden, Atterbury, and Swift…they may possibly correct that curious infelicity of diction which you acquired at Westminster”—American PSN readers may wish to substitute the White House for Westminster.

“Googling” discloses 117 sites, including later uses/abuses of Petronius’ phrase from Byron (Don Juan, Canto 16) to a Harvard Crimson’s denial of Horace’s curious felicity to the style of Steele Commager.

Up-date to my “Petronius, Johnson, and Michael Hadrianides,” PSN 32 (2002). I have now (July 3, 2006) been informed in an e-mail from John Overholt at the Houghton Library, Harvard, that Johnson’s copy of Petronius resides in the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Johnsoniana, now removed to Harvard and in the process of being catalogued. John Overholt, the Hyde Project Cataloguer, to whom I am most grateful, adds that his first perusal of the volume did not come across any marginal annotations from the Great Cham’s hand.

The one about re-organisation being a wonderful method for creating the illusion of progress, a pseudo-Petronian quotation kept alive by the Internet.

My late Nottingham University teacher, Walter R. Chalmers, in a letter to the London “Times” (June 21, 1994), recalled John Sullivan’s suggestion (PSN 12, May 1981) that it may have originally been pinned to a bulletin board in one of the post-1945 occupying army camps in Germany by “some disgruntled soldier of a literary bent.”

More recently, Nigel Rees (ed.), Brewer’s Famous Quotations (London, 2006), has traced it back to Robert Townsend’s Up the Organisation (1970) and David Willing’s The Human Element in Management (London, 1968).

Thought for the day: would this quotation apply to Petronius’ running of Bithynia?

Bearden, E. B., Repainting Romance: Ekphrasis and Otherness in Renaissance Imitations of Ancient Greek Romance. Dissertation, New York University, 2006.

My dissertation, Repainting Romance: Ekphrasis and Otherness in Renaissance Imitations of Ancient Greek Romance, illuminates complex literary articulations of flexible cultural identity through the deployment of verbal images in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century imitations of ancient Greek romance. My method opens new avenues for investigations of early modern identity through the discourse of word image studies: I examine romance characters' interactions with visual art objects in ekphrastic passages to chart adaptive shifts in gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliation. I contend that the interlaced structures and vast geographies of the romance genre produce sophisticated depictions of unstable cultural identity that merit our critical attention. Unlike assessments of self-fashioned and performative lyrical and dramatic representations of personhood that emphasize individual agency, my project puts cultural situation in dialogue with passible identity, showing that romance characters adapt to the realities into which the romancer weaves them. By analyzing early modern romances by Sidney, Cervantes, and Wroth, I demonstrate that the influence of Greek romances by Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus provided Renaissance imitators with a rich gallery of verbal images and ekphrastic techniques. I argue that in order to articulate new expressions of unstable cultural identity, Renaissance authors are not satisfied to imitate; rather, they translate Greek romance models of verbal image literacy into early modern European and colonial articulations of the intersections between word and image. My chapters explore such early modern contextualizations of ekphrasis as the European fascination with courtly expectations for emblematic reading, American pictographic language, eroticization of eastern ornament, and African hieroglyphics. Ultimately, I demonstrate that depictions of unstable identity in romance reflect anxieties about the potential for a loss of identity in a rapidly widening world and respond to these anxieties by offering the utopian possibility of the assimilation of outsiders into European communities through the wish-fulfillment that characterizes romance.

DeSmidt, D. B., The Declamatory Origin of Petronius Satyrica. Dissertation, Columbia University, 2006.

The following thesis argues that Petronius’ Satyrica offers the author’s reflection on how the complex of declamation affects mimesis. Declamation is understood in general by Petronius as formalized rhetorical play that is distanced from the gravity of the court, the morality of the philosopher and the sublimity of high literature. Petronius and Seneca the Elder define the nature of declamation by the metaphor of the ludus. Seneca shows that from the central importance of stasis-theory on declamation the actions and characters of every declamatory speech are presented beneath the overarching division of lex and aequitas but with the appeals of the declaimers most often made to aequitas. Like the stark figure of lex, the figure of Fortune looms over the Satyrica, the characters of which personify the principal of aequitas. But any real danger dissolves in the context of play, just as the real dangers of the court dissolve in declamation. Nonetheless, declamation has had its effect, and Petronius weaves the theme of declamation throughout the Satyrica to show that not only has declamation negatively affected “real” or high oratory but that declamation has also affected the “real” or high literary world. One such effect is Petronius’ Satyrica.

Fairey, E., Slavery in the Classical Utopia: A Comparative Study. Dissertation, City University of New York, 2006.

The literary genre of utopia arose out of two main source elements in classical antiquity. These can be differentiated by their divergent approaches to slavery and enslavement, and reflect, respectively, the attitudes of slaves, or of masters towards concepts of ideal societies. Therefore, the terms are derived: servile perspective utopia, dominant perspective utopia, and “hybrid utopia,” a combination of the two. The servile perspective is characterized by an idealization of release from compulsion, a transformation of the natural order, and the undermining of socio-political order. Examples of it include the mythology of the Age of Kronos and the god Dionysos, the fragments and complete works of Old Comedy, the literature connected with Cynic philosophy, the New Comic works of Plautus, and the Augustan Elegiac poets. The dominant perspective represents the ideal society as internalizing the value of compulsion and mastery, accepting nature as it is in reality, and establishing and maintaining socio-political order. Examples of it include Plato’s Republic, Laws, and his myth of Atlantis, Aristotle’s Politics, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, and literature on the “real-life” utopianists the Pythagoreans and the Spartans. Hybrid utopias are ideal societies that internalize the value of compulsion as well as that of release, and promise a transformation of nature as a reward for the establishment and maintenance of socio-political order. These include: Travelogues such as the accounts of Herodotus’ Ethiopians, Iambulus’ Islands of the Sun, where alteration of Nature takes place in the context of political virtue. Apuleius’ Metamorphosis involves an inverse transformation of Naure, where servile values are eventually subsumed into dominant. Real-life hybrid utopias include the communities of Essenes, who absorb the Cynic and comic ideal of the primacy of Nature, but follow dominant values, and the accounts of ancient slave rebellions, which utilize both servile and dominant utopian techniques.

Furse, A. T., The Construction of the Orator in the Early Imperial Period (31 BC–AD 118). Dissertation, Leeds, 2006.

This thesis explores the construction of the orator and oratory in Roman Imperial Literature and Social History and engages with theoretical works on gender definition to ask to question. “What does it mean to be an orator in the hundred and fifty years after Cicero’s death.” Chapter I considers the declamation on and around Cicero’s death, and how they are used to construct the figure of Cicero in the first century AD. Chapter 2 examines how Tacitus’ Dialogus can be read as a series of declamations which allow the participants and audience of the Dialogus to continue to re-examine the nature of oratory and its place in Roman society. Chapter 3 focuses on the relation of forensic oratory, declamation, and rhetorical theory. It shows how “school exercises” put rhetorical theory into practice and are a practical preparation for being an orator. Chapter 4 examines oratory and declamation in the Prefaces to Controversiae of the Elder Seneca. It shows that Seneca is not as pessimistic as he has been read and reevaluates the criticism of declamation in Books 3 and 9: what has been taken as a successful assault on the practice is shown instead to derive from the speakers’ inability to declaim well. Chapter 5 focuses on Tacitus’ views on orators by examining the use of the term orator in the Annals and the role of performance in defining an orator. Chapter 6 looks at Petronius’ Satyricon, particularly Trimalchio’s reading of the zodiac dish as a hitherto unnoticed allusions to the Platonic criticism of rhetoric, which can be seen to run through the various passages where oratory or declamation are discussed. Chapter 7 explores Quintilian’s discussion of the orator as the embodiment of the vir bonus and its implications for our reading of the ethics of rhetoric in Quintilian. The chapter considers Book 12 of the Institutio as a whole, to show that it deals with the orator’s career in an inherently Roman and practical way. The Conclusion addresses the perceived pessimism of the sources regarding the present state of rhetoric and its future. Instead of reading the period as one of the decline of oratory, due to imperial control land the rise of declamation, it stresses the continuity between Republic and Empire in they way that the Roman elite conceived of themselves and their role in public life as an orator.

Kirchenko, A., Apuleius’ Golden Ass: A Comedy of Storytelling. Dissertation, Harvard University, 2006.

The main goal of this study is to demonstrate that the storytelling style of Apuleius’ Golden Ass should be understood neither as a sign of the author’s carelessness nor as an expression of his desire to motivate the reader to undertake a hopeless quest for meaning, as has been suggested in previous research, but, much rather, as a means of comic characterization of the novel’s primary narrator Lucius. I argue that Lucius as the narrator of his own story, in marked contrast to all other storytellers in the novel, is portrayed as an inept storyteller who, no matter how hard he tries, is incapable of concealing the fact that he is making everything up. As a result, the narrative of the Golden Ass as a whole can be perceived as a veritable comedy of storytelling, in which Lucius plays the main comic role in two capacities—both as protagonist and as narrator.

I begin by demonstrating that Ps.-Lucian’s [Special characters omitted.], universally regarded as the epitome of Apuleius’ Greek original, is thoroughly based on the mimetic principles of narrative plotting, from which Apuleius noticeably deviates in his own narrative. Then I turn to the multiple narratives of Apuleius’ Golden Ass in order to show that it is primarily by contrast with some of the inserted tales that one can clearly recognize that the narratological deviance of the primary narrative is a self-consciously implemented strategy and that the incongruously moralistic tone of the final book of the novel produces the impression of a burlesque of moralistic interpretations in general. Finally, I discuss some narratological peculiarities of Apuleius’ narrators and point to possible antecedents of different facets of the comic figure of Lucius the narrator in the history of classical literature.

Nakatani, S., Achilles Tatius and Beyond: Studies in the History of the Reception of Leucippe And Clitophon in Modern Europe. Dissertation, Cardiff, 2005.

This dissertation examines the reception history of Achilles Tatius’ Greek romance Leucippe and Clitophon in modern Europe. The research falls into three main parts. Part I treats the scholarly reception. In chapter I, I briefly summarise the circulation of the manuscripts in the sixteenth century and the history of the editions and translations from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. In chapter 2, I further investigate some particular issues. In the first half I focus on three episodes in Achilles Tatius to exemplify the self-censorship of translators. In the latter half, I inquire into the readership. Chapter 3 treats the theory of prose ficiton and the conception of the history of fiction in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and then explores how these theories could apply to Achilles Tatius. Part II (Chapter 4) presents an overview of Achilles Tatius’ literary influence in Europe in roughly chronological order, and traces his prosperity and decline. Part III investigates some particular authors and works, which can well exemplify the features of the reception of Achilles Tatius. In chapter 5, Pierre du Ryer’s play Clitophon tragi-comédie (1629) shows the transformation of prose fiction to the totally different narrative mode of drama. In chapter 6, we move to French romances written by translators of Achilles Tatius. I analyse Abraham Ravaud’s L’Angélique (1626), and L.-A. du Perrron de Castera’s le Théatre des Passions et de la Fortune (1731), which indicate creative imitation of the Greek novel. Finally in chapter 7, Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene Book VI and William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline show a more complicated background regarding intertextuality. After investigating the direct influence of Achilles Tatius on Spenser and Shakespeare. I close the chapter with a proposal for a methodology for studying reception history.

Sabnis, S. A., Storytelling Slaves and Narrative Resistance in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2006.

Of the literary evidence for Roman slavery, virtually none can be attributed to slaves themselves. However, a convincing analogue for slavery is found in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, the story of a man-turned-ass who undergoes a series of hardships, passing from master to master, until he is restored through the intervention of a powerful patron. In my dissertation, I argue that the rhetoric and social dynamics of Roman slavery pervade Apuleius’ novel, both at the level of plot and in the narratological strategies employed. The experiences of Lucius the ass correspond to those of a Roman slave not only in the various torments and deprivations he endures, but also in the way he learns to cope with them: as an ass, he constantly observes those he serves, but as a narrator, he relishes revealing their secrets. The Metamorphoses is filled with the bad behavior of human masters, and as the novel progresses, the ass assumes the role of storyteller, thus finding a voice, paradoxically, to express resistance to the powers that control him.

In the first chapter I summarize the parallels between the Metamorphoses and slave experience, noting that this comparison elicits a striking difference between Apuleius’ novel and others in its genre. Enslavement features regularly in the Greek novels, but its effects are impermanent; the strangeness of Lucius’ anamorphosis shows the lasting effects of slavery. Moving into a closer reading of the text, I first look at the Prologue, finding that slaves and freedmen both disrupt the imagined intimacy between the author and the audience and subvert the hierarchy of social authority. Second, I examine the inset tales as proof that secret observations and storytelling amount to resistance on the part of subordinates. The narrating ass is educated in this system and increasingly asserts himself as the proprietary storyteller. In the final chapter I argue that Lucius’ initiation into Isiac cult resembles manumission, which is both liberating and obligating. Proper release is granted neither by the manumitting patron nor by the narrator, whose strategies ensure that the novel maintains a hold on its reader beyond its closing words.

Smith, A. T., The Discourse Pragmatics of Speech Margins: A Comprehensive Inter-disciplinary Survey of Research and a Primary Study of the Greek novel Callirhoe by Chariton. Dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary, 2006.

This dissertation has two parts, each of which makes a distinctive contribution to the emerging scholarship on reported speech. Both parts deal with the pragmatics of speech margins, reflecting on why narrators use such a wide variety of quotation formulae for introducing utterances.

Part 1 is a comprehensive survey of scholarship on the pragmatics of speech margins. The secondary literature is discussed according to the following broad groupings: research on classical and medieval languages; research on modern English; research on other modern western languages; research on modern non-western languages. To the best of this writer’s knowledge, the survey in Part 1 is by far the most extensive ever undertaken.

Part 2 utilizes many of the results of Part 1, employing them as an heuristic for investigating the pragmatics of speech margins in the Koine Greek novel Callirhoe by Chariton. To the best of this writer’s knowledge, such a study of the important ancient novel Callirhoe has never been undertaken.

De Temmerman, K., Characters on Papyrus: A Narratological Analysis of the Rhetorical Techniques of Characterization in the Ancient Greek Novel (orig. in Dutch). Disseration, Universiteit Gent (Belgium), 2006.

It is commonly known that the writing style of the ancient Greek novels (first centuries A.D.) is permeated by techniques and models originating from ancient rhetoric. This dissertation examines the role played by rhetorical techniques in the characterization of the protagonists in four of the five extant novels (Chariton’s Callirhoe, Xenophon of Ephesus’ Ephesian Story, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Cleitophon, and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe). The first part of the dissertation discusses the various techniques for the construction of êthos provided by ancient rhetoric and physiognomy (êthopoeia, chreia, paradeigma, etc.). I point out that almost all techniques of characterization which are listed by modern (structuralist) narratology, are anticipated by techniques dealt with in ancient rhetoric and physiognomy. Thus, it is plausible that ancient readers and writers drew upon a conceptual framework that corresponds, at least partially, to the one applied by modern readers.

The second part of the dissertation examines how the Greek novelists apply their rhetorical and physiognomical toolkit in the characterization of their protagonists. This part offers not only the first thorough analysis of characterization in these texts, but also the first systematic study of their rhetorical texture. I point out that the rhetorical display in the novels does not prevent characterization (as the communis opinio in Greek novel scholarship would have it), but that rhetoric and characterization in these novels go hand in hand. I conclude that the novelists construct the character of their protagonists in a much subtler way and with a larger toolkit of techniques than has been acknowledged up to now. Thus, this dissertation challenges the widely-held view that protagonists’ characterization in this genre is primarily a matter of typification and idealization.

[1] The summaries of the dissertations are from the data supplied by Pro Quest.

[2] Vines 2002, 159.

[3] Vines 2002, 153.

[4] Pervo 1987, 101.

[5] Vines 2002, 163.