Longus and Vergil

2021 ◽  
pp. 255-325
Author(s):  
Daniel Jolowicz
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pastoral Succession ◽  
Daphnis And Chloe

Chapter 7 claims that Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe exhibits a sustained engagement with Vergil’s Eclogues and Aeneid, and, to a lesser extent, the Georgics. The introduction (Section 7.1) gathers the evidence for the novel as the composition of a Romanized member of the Mytilenean Greek elite, descended from Pompey’s freedman, Theophanes of Mytilene, and suggests that it was written at some point during the second half of the second century; this will become particularly relevant to Section 7.8 on Longus’ subversive engagement with the Aeneid (a poem celebrating the Julian—not Pompeian!—claim to autocratic rule). Sections 7.2–7.7 are concerned with setting out the features of Vergilian pastoral that recur in Longus, and which are absent from Theocritus (or at least different in degree and kind). These include: the fragility of pastoral autonomy (7.2); theft and vandalism (7.3, 7.3.1, the latter also positing a connection with Ovidian elegy); various elements of Philetas’ biography (7.4); dendronyms (7.5); Amaryllis and pastoral echo (7.6); and Tityros and pastoral succession (7.7).

THE SATYRICA AND THE GOSPELS IN THE SECOND CENTURY

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 356-367
Author(s):  
Robyn Faith Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Circumstantial Evidence ◽  
The Novel ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
Pliny The Younger ◽  
Terminus Post Quem ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Greek Novel

The Satyrica has long been associated with a Neronian courtier named Petronius, mentioned by Tacitus in his Annals. As such, the text is usually dated to the mid first century c.e. This view is so established that certain scholars have suggested it is ‘little short of perverse not to accept the general consensus and read the Satyrica as a Neronian text of the mid-60s ad’. In recent years, however, there has been a groundswell of support for re-evaluating this long-held position. Laird, after comparing the ‘form and content’ of the text to the Greek novel, came to the ‘unattractive’ conclusion that the text may be second century. Similarly, in two recent pieces in CQ, Roth argues that the manumission scene in the Cena establishes a new terminus post quem for the text; she suggests that the freedoms granted by Trimalchio closely parallel—and parody—descriptions of awarding ciuitas found in the letters of Pliny the Younger. Indeed, the three slaves manumitted in the novel are associated with a boar (Sat. 40.3–41.4), Dionysus (Sat. 41.6–7) and a falling star (Sat. 54.1–5); likewise, the three slaves that are the subject of Pliny's letter are C. Valerius Aper (boar), C. Valerius Dionysius (god of wine) and C. Valerius Astraeus (stars). Roth's argument suggests that the author of the Satyrica was not Nero's contemporary but a member of Pliny's intellectual circle, offering strong circumstantial evidence that troubles the accepted tradition on the work's authorship and date.

Language as Prayer in Finnegans Wake

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Jaurretche
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Genetic Criticism ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Finnegans Wake ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Creating Meaning

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake abounds with prayers from all traditions, and their echoes and cadences may be found on almost every page. Bringing together thinkers from antiquity, the Middle Ages, early Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book argues that Joyce views prayer as theory of language. It gives Joyce a verbal strategy for discussing immaterial things from which he composes his book of the night: image, magic, dreams, and speech. Beginning with the second-century theologian Origen’s treatise On Prayer, as well as the eighteenth-century philosopher and rhetorician Giambattista Vico’s theories of the formation of language and culture, the book argues that Joyce’s use of language as prayer works progressively across the four sections of the novel, creating meaning from its otherwise discrete and associative arrangement. Since Plato, the culture has recognized that religious utterances possess unique characteristics, yet analytical philosophy and literary scholarship have not produced a focused study of prayer. And although brilliant and essential work in the field of genetic criticism shows us Joyce’s building blocks and methods of creation, no book suggests why Finnegans Wake follows the finished order it does. This work meets those needs.

Longus and Achilles Tatius

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Froma Zeitlin
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Preliminary Comparison ◽  
Daphnis And Chloe ◽  
Object Lesson ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter pairs two Greek novels: Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe and Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Cleitophon, both generally dated to the second century ce. At first glance, they may seem to be strange bedfellows: Longus’s work is a pastoral romance, a small-scale miniature set entirely in an idyllic landscape on the island of Lesbos, where the young lovers enjoy conditions of unimaginable innocence and what adventures they have are limited to their own surroundings, while Achilles Tatius’s is a sprawling tale of maximum complexity of twice the length, involving a wide-ranging geography, and generally encompasses a much broader range of experience. Yet a preliminary comparison of the two romances is an object lesson in the flexibility of the genre itself, that is, the creative possibilities of using novelistic tropes and thematic conventions to produce entirely different results, while reinforcing (if, at times, challenging) the ideological underpinnings of the ideal romance.

scholarly journals THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEPHERDESS: V. Р. ASTAFIEV’S MODERN PASTORAL IN THE CONTEXT OF GENRE TRADITIONS

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 375-407
Author(s):  
Alla Bolshakova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Main Type ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Single Line ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Theoretical Justification ◽  
Daphnis And Chloe ◽  
The Middle Ages

The purpose of this article was to consider the movement of literature through the genre metamorphoses as a category that transforms in its immutability. Consequently, the author’s task was to study the modifications of the genre of love idyll using the example of Modern Pastoral ву V. P. Astafiev’s (The Shepherd and the Shepherdess) in the context of works about love that had emerged in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This task is carried out using the example of the initial samples of the love idyll genre in prose, as well as a theoretical justification of the unity of love idyll and pastoral as its main type (M. M. Bakhtin), which make up a single line of genre tradition. The article demonstrates the productivity of genre splices, i. e. the initial actualization of the love idyll genre in combination with the novel (Daphnis and Chloe, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult) and the story (The Tale of Peter and Fevronia, The Shepherd and the Shepherdess). The correlation between the ancient pastoral and Astafiev’s Modern Pastoral was noted in literary studies, albeit poorly justified, while the implementation of the traditions of the love idyll set by the above-mentioned medieval models remained beyond the scope of research. The study tested the typological resemblance of genre models, their similarities in themes, plot, and imagery, which allowed to include characters in the range of enamoured couples that have largely determined the development of world literature. The article focused on the debated question of the validity of the writer’s definition: Modern Pastoral. As a result, the study tested the productivity of Astafiev’s update to the genre canon; the validity of the genre naming by the writer, with regard to the modification made by him.

Envisioning a Dystopian, Post-Christian Society in P. Anderson Graham’s The Collapse of Homo Sapiens

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Frederick Hale
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Force ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
National Life ◽  
British Culture ◽  
Christian Society

Abstract As one of many contemporary British dystopian novels, P. Anderson Graham’s 1923 The Collapse of Homo Sapiens envisaged Britain in the twenty-second century as a devastated society that has largely reverted to a primitive, non-Christian state. However, a remnant of the surviving population has memories of the religious dimensions of national life, helping them to cope with the exigencies of their meagre existence. A modest revival of the faith of their forebears ensues, which in turn triggers a reaction against the re-assertion of Christianity by nationalistic elements that regard it as too charitable a social force to fortify their efforts to revitalise British culture in a hostile geopolitical setting. The narrative perspective of the novel is critical of the truncated state of that religion in Britain in the 1920s and how this was failing to guide and inspire peoples’ lives at that time.

Reading the Diatessaron with Ephrem: The Word and the Light, the Voice and the Star

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew R. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Reception History ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
History Of ◽  
Original Interpretation ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Continuous Narrative ◽  
Opening Section

Through a consideration of the reception history of the so-called “Diatessaron,” Tatian’s second-century gospel compilation, we can learn much about the nature of this peculiar text. Of paramount importance here is the Syriac Commentary on the Gospel attributed to Ephrem of Nisibis. In this article I argue that the ordering of pericopae in the opening section of Tatian’s gospel, which interweaves Matthean and Lukan passages within a broadly Johannine incluisio, prompts the Syriac exegete to an unexpected interpretation of these narratives. By reading these pericopae as a single, continuous narrative, he creatively combines the divine “Word” and “Light” of the Johannine prologue with the Synoptic traditions about John the Baptist as the “voice” and about the star that shone to guide the magi, presenting the star and the voice as extensions of the Son’s own agency. This remarkably original interpretation of the nativity of Jesus illustrates the degree of artistry that went into the making of Tatian’s text and the novel interpretations it elicited from its readers.

Dionysus as Jesus: The Incongruity of a Love Feast in Achilles Tatius'sLeucippe and Clitophon2.2

2014 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney J. P. Friesen
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Achilles Tatius ◽  
Ancient Novel ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Relationship

A relationship between Achilles Tatius and Christianity has been imagined from at least as early as the tenth century when theSudaclaimed that he had converted to Christianity and been ordained as a bishop. Modern scholarship has found this highly improbable; nevertheless, attempts to explore connections between his late second-centuryc.e.novel,Leucippe and Clitophon, and early Christianity continue. In recent decades, within a context of renewed interest in the ancient novel, scholars of early Christianity have found a wealth of material in the novels to illuminate the generic development and meaning of Christian narratives in the New Testament and beyond. Less attention, however, has been given to the ways in which the novels respond to and incorporate themes from Christianity. Achilles Tatius's etiological myth of wine and its associated harvest festival inLeuc. Clit. 2.2 represent a particularly striking point of contact between Christianity and the Greek novel. In the first section below, I systematically review the narrative and ritual parallels betweenLeuc. Clit. 2.2 and the Christian Eucharist and conclude that they are too striking to be accidental or to have gone unnoticed by an ancient reader with knowledge of Christianity. Although these similarities have been pointed out, their meaning and consequences have received comparatively little attention from scholars either of the novel or of early Christianity. Thus, in the subsequent sections of this study I contextualize these parallels within second-century Christian and non-Christian literary and religious culture. My contention is that an exploration of the relationship betweenLeuc. Clit. 2.2 and the Christian Eucharist will provide valuable insight both into the larger project of Achilles Tatius and into the relationship between early Christianity and its contemporary context, particularly the Second Sophistic.

Eros and the Lesbian Pastorals of Longos

1960 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 32-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. H. O. Chalk
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Title Page ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Graham Greene ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Daphnis And Chloe ◽  
The Way

‘Daphnis & Chloe: A most sweet & pleasant Pastoral Romance for Young ladies by George Thornley, Gent. … 1657.’ The well-known title-page of the first English translation of Longos from the original is characteristic of the attitude which has always prevailed towards this work. If we turn to the present day we find that the latest translator into English writes in his introduction ‘Daphnis and Chloewas only meant to be “a source of pleasure for the human race”, and might have been described by a second-century Graham Greene as an “entertainment”’. The intervening three centuries provide some acknowledgments of Longos' skill in individual departments—the description of nature, for example, or the management of plot—but taking the work as a whole scarcely any reader seems to have regarded it as more than an amorous triviality with a country setting; enjoyable in its pastoral descriptions; enjoyable in its amorous passages (or shocking, according to the taste of the reader); essentially trivial.It is my object to argue that this view, by taking account of only one side of the book, misrepresents it as a whole. Longos meant us to find in his work a serious import, as well as entertainment, and the way in which he realises this intention in all the details of the story makes of it a serious work of art.

Miscellaneous Mastery: Reading Clement of Alexandria

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
MARK EDWARDS
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Aulus Gellius ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
Pliny The Elder ◽  
Four Books ◽  
Amorphous Character ◽  
Ancient Texts

The aim of this learned and enterprising book is to elucidate the structure and intention of Clement's Stromateis by comparing it with pagan texts from the first and second centuries of our era which belong, as we might now say, to the same genre. This term, which is chaperoned by quotation marks on p. 15, has proved itself heuristically indispensable, but has no closer equivalent in ancient Greek than genos, which is as likely to denote the style or metre of a work as its place in a critical taxonomy. Strict conventions governed versification and the composition of speeches for given occasions, but it is we who have all but invented the epyllion and coined our own names for the novel, the autobiography and the didactic poem. While Heath proposes on p. 138 to render Stromateis as ‘layout’, ‘miscellany’ is the term that is now most commonly applied to this and other ancient texts whose amorphous character seems to resist taxonomy. As Heath observes, however (p. 24), there are all too many specimens of Greek and Latin writing which are in some sense miscellaneous: she might have quoted the thesis of her namesake, Malcolm Heath, that abrupt transitions, divagations and surprises were not aberrations from the classical norm, but calculated devices to heighten the pleasure or whet the interest of the reader, both in poetry and in prose. The culture of ubiquitous imitation was also a culture of unceasing improvisation, and both practices are amply illustrated in Heath's comparison of the Stromateis with four books from the second century to which it bears an obvious resemblance: the Natural history of Pliny the Elder, the Convivial questions of Plutarch, the Attic nights of Aulus Gellius and the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus.

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