Narrative structure and narrative texture in the 'Aithiopika' of Heliodorus

Abstract

This thesis consists of four individual studies, divided into two sections; "Narrative Structure" and "Narrative Texture". The first chapter ("Heliodoros and the Conventions of Romance") addresses the issue of the essence of romance; it attempts to get behind the narrative of the Aithiopika in such a way as to reveal how Heliodoros works within the boundaries and received practice of the genre ancient romance, and how he adapts and deviates from them. The second chapter ("Hearing Voices: Incorporated Genres in the Aithiopika") deals with genre, but in a different context. This study takes a concept- incorporated genre- from the theorist M.M. Bakhtin, and applies it to Heliodoros' narrative. Here the term "genre" takes on a broader significance, meaning not the romances themselves, but types of narrative, and ways of narrating, which Heliodoros has introduced into his story. Both chapters one and two are systematic analyses of the text; they deal with how Heliodoros has structured his narrative in ways conventional and unconventional. In the final chapters the term genre encompasses specific works and literary groupings. These studies help to demonstrate how Heliodoros has fleshed out the basic structure of the Aithiopika, or, in other words, they provide a feel for some of the texture of the romance. "Heliodoros and Homer" is explicitly narratological in outlook, showing one way in which Heliodoros has provided a paradigm for reading, perhaps not just the novel itself, but specifically within the novel the references to and allusions from Homer. "Heliodoros and Tragedy" tackles the meaning of theatricality, and references to the theatre, in an author writing in the late Roman Empire. But this chapter, too, provides a glimpse at the narrative texture, especially with regard to the way in which Heliodoros co-opted yet another literary predecessor, Euripides.