Overview

"Some of the world's earliest large-form fictional narratives--what would today be called novels-are found in ancient Greece. Dating back to the first century CE, these narratives contain many of the elements common to the novelistic genre, for instance, the joining, separation, and reunion of two lovers. These ancient works have often been heralded as the ancestors of the modern novel; but what can we say of the origins of the Greek novel itself?This book argues that whereas much of Greek literature was committed to a form of cultural purism, presenting itself as part of a continuous tradition reaching back to the founding fathers within the tradition, the novel reveled in cultural hybridity. The earliest Greek novelistic literature combined Greek and non-Greek traditions. More than this, however, it also often self-consciously explored its own hybridity by focusing on stories of cultural hybridization, or what we would now call ""mixed-race"" relations. This book is thus not a conventional account of the origins of the Greek novel: it is not an attempt to pinpoint the moment of invention, and to trace its subsequent development in a straight line. Rather, it makes a virtue of the murkiness, or ""dirtiness,"" of the origins of the novel: there is no single point of creation, no pure tradition, only transgression and transformation. The novel thus emerges as an outlier within the Greek literary corpus: a form of literature written in Greek, but not always committing to Greek cultural identity. Dirty Love focuses particularly on the relationship between Persian, Egyptian, Jewish and Greek literature, and explores such texts as Ctesias' Persica, Joseph and Aseneth, the Alexander Romance, and the tale of Ninus and Semiramis. It will appeal not only to those interested in Greek literary history, but also to readers of near eastern and biblical literature."

Full Product Details

Author:   Tim Whitmarsh (E.P. Warren Praelector and Tutorial Fellow in Greek, E.P. Warren Praelector and Tutorial Fellow in Greek, Corpus Christi College, Oxford)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.90cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 15.50cm
Weight:   0.386kg
ISBN:  

9780199742653

ISBN 10:   0199742650
Pages:   224
Publication Date:   31 May 2018
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface Abbreviations Prelude First movement: Hellenism and hybridity 1. Dirty love 2. A history of the novel 3. What is a novel? 4. Epic and novel 5. Sourcing Callirhoe Second movement: Persians 6. The romance of Zarinaea and Stryangaeus 7. Who was Ctesias? 8. Persian love stories 9. Media studies 10. Cyrus' sex life Third movement: Jews 11. Return to Joseph 12. The Jewish novel 13. Joseph in love Fourth movement: Egyptians 14. The long Hellenistic 15. Alexander in kohl 16. Whose paradigm? Fifth movement: How Greek is the Greek romance? 17. How Greek is the Greek romance? 18. Romancing Semiramis 19. Dirty love in late antiquity 20. Conclusion: the foundation of Marseilles, some brooch-pins, and the history of the novel

Reviews

Whitmarsh's argument is bold and original, and part of a larger endeavor, he says, to revise our understanding of classical Greek literature by locating it in a wider horizon in which Greekness itself is interrogated. In sum, this is a rich and stimulating book. --Bryn Mawr Classical Review If you have some interest in the origins of the novel, the classical world or the roots of Western civilisation, you'll enjoy this. I felt cleverer after reading it. Tibor Fischer, Standpoint Path-breaking, elegant, and breathtakingly erudite. Whitnarsh rewrites the history of ancient Mediterranean literature as well as the ancient Greek novel. Indispensable reading for cultural historians everywhere. --Edith Hall, King's College London An acknowledged expert in Greek literature under the Empire, Whitmarsh here focuses the high beam of his vast erudition on other cultures (notably, Egyptian, Persian, Jewish) to offer a new understanding of the place of Greek fiction in a hybridized world from Hellenistic times onward, one that will stimulate as well as provoke the reader to reconsider long accepted ideas. --Froma Zeitlin, Princeton University

An enormously stimulating journey through a wide range of texts, relative to the environment out of which the Greek novel emerged. The stress laid throughout on the novel's willingness, even eagerness, to cross cultural boundaries carries conviction regardless of whether the arguments of individual chapters stand or fall. Dirty Love should be required reading for any future course in the Greek novel, and for anyone who wishes to dip further into one of the topics that it touches on, the rich footnotes on every page attest to the depth of scholarship throughout. -- Sara R. Johnson, Phoenix Whitmarsh's argument is bold and original, and part of a larger endeavor, he says, to revise our understanding of classical Greek literature by locating it in a wider horizon in which Greekness itself is interrogated. In sum, this is a rich and stimulating book. --Bryn Mawr Classical Review If you have some interest in the origins of the novel, the classical world or the roots of Western civilisation, you'll enjoy this. I felt cleverer after reading it. Tibor Fischer, Standpoint Path-breaking, elegant, and breathtakingly erudite. Whitnarsh rewrites the history of ancient Mediterranean literature as well as the ancient Greek novel. Indispensable reading for cultural historians everywhere. --Edith Hall, King's College London An acknowledged expert in Greek literature under the Empire, Whitmarsh here focuses the high beam of his vast erudition on other cultures (notably, Egyptian, Persian, Jewish) to offer a new understanding of the place of Greek fiction in a hybridized world from Hellenistic times onward, one that will stimulate as well as provoke the reader to reconsider long accepted ideas. --Froma Zeitlin, Princeton University

If you have some interest in the origins of the novel, the classical world or the roots of Western civilisation, youll enjoy this. I felt cleverer after reading it. * Tibor Fischer, Standpoint *

Path-breaking, elegant, and breathtakingly erudite. Whitnarsh rewrites the history of ancient Mediterranean literature as well as the ancient Greek novel. Indispensable reading for cultural historians everywhere. --Edith Hall, King's College London An acknowledged expert in Greek literature under the Empire, Whitmarsh here focuses the high beam of his vast erudition on other cultures (notably, Egyptian, Persian, Jewish) to offer a new understanding of the place of Greek fiction in a hybridized world from Hellenistic times onward, one that will stimulate as well as provoke the reader to reconsider long accepted ideas. --Froma Zeitlin, Princeton University

Author Information

Tim Whitmarsh is the second A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge. He also holds honorary roles at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the Universities of Pretoria and Exeter. He is the author of 7 books, including most recently Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World, which has been translated into Dutch and (soon to appear) Chinese and Greek. He has written over 70 academic articles on ancient Greece, and appears regularly in newspapers such as The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, and on BBC radio and TV.

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