Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon

by Helen Morales

• ISBN13: 9780521642644
• ISBN10: 0521642647
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-31
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon, long regarded as the most controversial of the ancient Greek novels, is an outrageous tale of love and loss, of Phoenicians and philosophers, virginity tests and snuff murders. This book, the first published monograph on Achilles Tatius, is a study of Leucippe and Clitophon in its literary and visual contexts. It presents fresh insights into the work's narrative complexities and interpretative difficulties. It is particularly concerned with the novel's obsessions with the eye, with theories, descriptions, and metaphorics of the visual. It advances a reading that gives full play to the narrative's 'disgressions' - ekphrasis, sententia, blason, and spectacle - and discusses the politics of digressivity. This book is written to be accessible to non-specialists and all Greek is translated or paraphrased. It aims to contribute to a cultural history of viewing and to feminist literary criticism, as well as to the study of the ancient novel.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
List of abbreviations	xii
1 Introduction	1	(35)
Achilles Tatius	1	(7)
Vision and visuality	8	(28)
2 Readers and reading	36	(60)
Open(ing) readings	36	(24)
Theatricality and reading	60	(17)
Characterisation and viewing	77	(19)
3 Description, digression and form	96	(56)
Sightseeing in Alexandria	100	(6)
Sententiousness and the arrested eye	106	(24)
Vision and the eye	130	(13)
The ending of the novel	143	(9)
4 Gender, gaze and speech	152	(75)
Looking at Leucippe	156	(64)
Sweet-talking Melite	220	(7)
5 Conclusion	227	(5)
References	232	(27)
Index locorum	259	(6)
General index	265