The Greek Novel

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Pirates, magic, shipwrecks, star-crossed lovers, human sacrifice, comedy, adventure, drama, romance: the Greek novel has it all. Five so-called novels, written in Greek, survive for us: Chariton's Callirhoe, Xenophon's Anthia and Habrocomes, Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon, Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, and Heliodorus’s Charicleia and Theagenes. This class will focus on reading one of these texts closely in the original, while reading selections from the others in translation to understand the connections across the genre. We will consider topics such as: the literary traditions the novels grew out of; narrative technique and fictionality; their readership and historical context; and their connection to our own familiar genre.