Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel

This book presents a new and exciting selection of significant articles on the Roman novels of Apuleius and Petronius. Some of the papers are for the first time available in translation from the original German and Italian. The introduction by Stephen Harrison surveys the scholarly work that has been done on the texts since 1900. All Latin and Greek quotations are rendered anew into English.

This anthology of articles on the Roman novels of Petronius and Apuleius makes available some of the most useful and important articles published in German and Italian as well as English over the last thirty years. The introduction, by the editor, provides a general assessment of all scholarly work written about the texts from the 1900s to the 1990s, setting the papers usefully in context. The articles in this collection which concern the work of Petronius include a general interpretation of a fragmentary and problematic text, exploration of narrative technique, relation to Menippean satire and recently discovered Greek novel papyri, and realism. On Apuleius, the collection includes pieces on narrative and ideological unity, relation to religion and Platonism, exploration of narrative technique, relation to epic and to the Greek ass stories, to folk-tale, and historical realism. A reflection of the period of rapid expansion of scholarly interest in the area of the ancient novel this book combines the best of current international scholarly interpretation.