No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Generic self-awareness in a Komnenian novel: the hero in Drosilla and Charikles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 June 2023
Abstract
This article examines the twelfth-century novel Drosilla and Charikles by Niketas Eugenianos from the perspective of cognitive frames. Based on the analysis of two key passages (1.230–57 and 3.341–50), I argue that the hero recognizes himself as part of the novelistic plot. While such metanarrative features of the Komnenian novels have been recognized previously, the cognitive approach offered in this article allows for a better understanding of the narratological complexities at play in Eugenianos’ novel and in the ancient and Byzantine novelistic genre at large.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham
Footnotes
A shorter version of this analysis was presented at ICAN VI, ‘The Ancient Novel: Roads Less Travelled’ (Ghent 2022). I would like to thank Professor Ingela Nilsson and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on this article.
References
1 For translation of and introductions to all four Komnenian novels, see Jeffreys, E., Four Byzantine novels (Liverpool 2012)Google Scholar, esp. 339–458 on Eugenianos (introduction and translation). See also R. Beaton, The Medieval Greek Romance (2nd edition, London 1996) and more recently I. Nilsson, ‘Romantic love in rhetorical guise: the Byzantine revival of the twelfth century’, and Roilos, P., ‘“I grasp, oh, artist, your enigma, I grasp your drama”: reconstructing the implied audience of the twelfth-century Byzantine novel’, both in Cupane, C. and Krönung, B. (eds), Fictional Storytelling in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond (Leiden 2016), 39–66Google Scholar and 463–78 respectively.
2 Kaldellis, A., Hellenism in Byzantium: the transformations of Greek identity and the reception of the classical tradition (Cambridge 2008) 225–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Nilsson, I., Raconter Byzance: la littérature au XIIe siècle (Paris 2014) 139–45Google Scholar.
3 Mullett, M., ‘No drama, no poetry, no fiction, no readership, no literature’ in James, L. (ed.), A Companion to Byzantium (Chichester 2010) 227–38Google Scholar.
4 Beaton, The Medieval Greek Romance, 52–90; Agapitos, P., and, ‘Narrative rhetoric “drama” rediscovered: scholars and poets in Byzantium interpret Heliodorus’ in Hunter, R. (ed.), Studies in Heliodorus (Cambridge 1998) 125–56Google Scholar, and ‘Writing, reading and reciting (in) Byzantine erotic fiction’ in B. Mondrain (ed.), Lire et écrire à Byzance (Paris 2006) 125–76.
5 Jouanno, C., ‘Nicétas Eugénianos: un héritier du roman grec’, Revue des études grecques 102 (1989) 346–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nilsson, Raconter Byzance, 178–85.
6 Burton, J. B. ‘A reemergence of Theocritean poetry in the Byzantine novel’, Classical Philology 98.3 (2003) 251–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘The pastoral in Byzantium’ in M. Fantuzzi and T. D. Papanghelis (eds), Companion to Greek and Latin Pastoral (Leiden 2006) 549–79.
7 Roilos, P., Amphoteroglossia: a poetics of the twelfth-century medieval Greek novel (Cambridge, MA 2006)Google Scholar; Meunier, F., ‘Les romans de l’époque comnène: des réminiscences bibliques ?’, Revue des études byzantines 69 (2011) 205–17Google Scholar.
8 For Kallidemos’ role as a pseudo-antagonist, see Conca, F., ‘Il romanzo di Niceta Eugeniano: Modelli narrativi e stilistici’, Siculorum gymnasium 39 (1986) 115–26Google Scholar.
9 Niketas Eugenianos D&C 6. 333–558 and 6.566–643.
10 Kazhdan, A. ‘Bemerkungen zu Niketas Eugenianos’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft 16 (1967) 101–17Google Scholar; Jouanno, ‘Nicétas Eugénianos’.
11 Nilsson, Raconter Byzance, 181. For an alternative interpretation, see Meunier, F. ‘Les romans de l’époque comnène: des réminiscences bibliques?’, Revue des études byzantines 69 (2011) 205–17Google Scholar.
12 Roilos ‘I grasp, oh, artist, your enigma’.
13 Ibid. On this female ideal, see Bértola, J. ‘Book epigrams bizantinos sobre novelas griegas antiguas’, Anales de Filología Clásica 31 (2018) 25–36Google Scholar.
14 Roilos ‘I grasp, oh, artist, your enigma’, 471.
15 Nilsson ‘Romantic love in rhetorical guise’, 44–5.
16 Burton, ‘The pastoral in Byzantium’, 565.
17 K. L. Delbó, ‘Der byzantinische Roman im theatron’ in Z. Farklas, L. Hortváth, and T. Mészáros (eds), Byzance et ĺOccident V. Ianuae Europea (Budapest 2019) 31–41 (38).
18 On cognitive frames, see M. Minsky, ‘A framework for representing knowledge’ in D. Metzing (ed.) Frame Conceptions and Text Understanding (Berlin 1979), 1–25. On adventure-time, see M. M. Bakhtin, ‘Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel’ in The Dialogic Imagination: four essays (tr. M. Holquist and C. Emerson, Austin 1981) 84–258.
19 On this kind of opening scene in medias res and its model in Heliodorus, see Agapitos, ‘Narrative, rhetoric, and “drama” rediscovered’, 148–51.
20 Conca, ‘Il romanzo di Niceta Eugeniano’; P. Cortez, ‘Locus amoenus y plátano: iniciación erótica en Drosila y Caricles’ Bizantinistica 21 (2020) 145–58.
21 Ed. F. Conca, Nicetas Eugenianus, De Drosillae et Chariclis amoribus (Amsterdam 1990) 3.330–50. Tr. Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels, 384, adapted.
22 J. Winkler ‘The mendacity of Kalasiris and the narrative strategy of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika’ in J. Winkler and G. Williams (eds.), Later Greek Literature (Cambridge 1982), 93–158.
23 Heliodorus, Aethiopika 3.64. Tr. J. R. Morgan in B. P. Reardon (ed.), Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley 1989), 415.
24 Eumathios Macrembolites, Hysmine and Hysminias 5.6.17. Ed. M. Marcovich, De Hysmines et Hysminiae amoribus (Leipzig 2001), tr. Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels, 213. On the chronology and internal sequence of the Komnenian novels, see S. MacAlister, ‘Byzantine twelfth-century romances: a relative chronology’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 15 (1991) 175–210; Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels, esp. 161–5; Nilsson, Raconter Byzance, 72–86. Regardless of their differences, it is agreed that the composition of D&C is later than that of Hysmine and Hysminias and Rhodanthe and Dosikles. A different alternative is offered by C. Cupane, ‘ ῎Ερως-Βασιλεύς: la figura di Eros nel romanzo bizantino d’ amore’, Atti dell’ Accademia di Arti di Palermo IV.33, II (1974) 243–97.
25 The narration of Kleandros’ experiences appears in 2.57–3.44 and that of Charikles’ in 3.45–4.68.
26 Rhodante and Dosikles 3.69–75 and 6.394–6; Hysmine and Hysminias 3.1.1–5 and 7.18.1–19.1.
27 N. Holzberg, ‘The genre: novels proper and the fringe’ in G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in The Ancient World. (Leiden 1996) 11–28 (14).
28 Achilles Tatius, Leukippe and Kleitophon 1.4.5; 1.5.3; 1.9.1–2.
29 Tr. C. Gill in Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, 296.
30 Tr. J. R. Morgan in Reardon, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, 422.
31 In Hysmine and Hysminias 2.11, Kratisthenes explains to Hysminias who Eros is.
32 Hysmine and Hysminias 3.1.1–5. On these dreams of Hysminias, see Nilsson, I., Erotic Pathos, Rhetorical Pleasure: narrative technique and mimesis in Eumathios Makrembolites’ Hysmine and Hysminias (Uppsala 2001), 103–10Google Scholar.
33 Rhodanthe and Dosikles 2.188 and sqq. When Dosikles tells his story to Glaukon, he explains that he fell in love immediately after seeing the girl; there is no indication that he needed someone else to help him understand his feelings.
34 R&D 1. 88–131.
35 In Aethiopika, Kalasiris arranges a fictitious abduction to help Charikleia escape with her beloved (4.17.3–5) and in Rhodanthe and Dosikles it is the hero who abducts the heroine (2.436–54), so these two situations differ from the one feared by Charikles.
36 For a more complete enumeration of the main motifs, see Bakhtin, ‘Forms of time and of the chronotope’; Holzberg, ‘The genre’, 14.
37 M. Minsky, ‘A framework for representing knowledge’, 1.
38 Herman, D. ‘Directions in cognitive narratology: triangulating stories, media, and the mind,’ in Alber, J. and Fludernik, M. (eds), Postclassical Narratology: approaches and analyses (Columbus, OH 2010) 137–62 (156)Google Scholar.
39 Niketas Eugenianos, Drosilla and Charikles 1.230–46 (Conca), tr. Jeffreys, Four Byzantine Novels, 358.
40 Roilos, Amphoteroglossia, 107
41 Ibid., 108.
42 Palmer, A., Fictional Minds (Lincoln, NE 2004), 121Google Scholar.
43 Segal, M. E., ‘A cognitive-phenomenological theory of fictional narrative’, in Duchan, J. F., Bruder, G. A. and Hewitt, L. E. (eds), Deixis in Narrative: a cognitive science perspective (New York 2009) 61–78 (72)Google Scholar.
44 On unfulfilled expectations as regards violence among male characters in D&C, see Burton, J. B. ‘Abduction and elopement in the Byzantine novel’ Greek, Roman and Bizantine Studies 41 (2000) 377–409Google Scholar; as regards non-Greek characters, see Cortez, P., ‘Innovación en torno al tópos anti-bárbaro: la representación del árabe en Drosila y Caricles’, Erytheia 42 (2021) 59–77Google Scholar.
45 Yuan, Y. ‘Framing surprise, suspense, and curiosity: a cognitive approach to the emotional effects of narrative’ Neohelicon 45.2 (2018) 517–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 See Burton, ‘Abduction and elopement’ on the connections with civil and canon laws; Nilsson ‘Romantic love in rhetorical guise’, on marriage practices; Roilos ‘I grasp, oh, artist, your enigma’ on cultural conventions in general.
47 The actiantial model was developed by Greimas in 1966; tr. D. McDowell, R. Schleifer and A. Velie, A. J. Greimas, Structural Semantics: an attempt at a method (Lincoln 1984).