Reading Fiction with Lucian: Fakes, Freaks and Hyperreality

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Cambridge University Press, Nov 10, 2014 - History
This book offers a captivating new interpretation of Lucian as a fictional theorist and writer to stand alongside the novelists of the day, bringing to bear on his works a whole new set of reading strategies. It argues that the aesthetic and cultural issues Lucian faced, in a world of mimesis and replication, were akin to those found in postmodern contexts: the ubiquity of the fake, the erasure of origins, the focus on the freakish and weird at the expense of the traditional. In addition to exploring the texture of Lucian's own writing, Dr ní Mheallaigh uses Lucian as a focal point through which to examine other fictional texts of the period, including Antonius Diogenes' The Incredible Things Beyond Thule, Dictys' Journal of the Trojan War and Ptolemy Chennus' Novel History, and reveals the importance of fiction's engagement with its contemporary culture of writing, entertainment and wonder.
 

Contents

microfiction and the Greek novel
39
philosophy of fiction drama of reading
72
metamorphoses of the reader from
108
adventures at the edge of the text
144
travels in hyperreality
206
fiction and the wonderculture of the Roman
261
Bibliography
278
General index
299
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About the author (2014)

Karen ní Mheallaigh is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on the postclassical literary cultures of the Hellenistic and Romano-Greek worlds, especially ancient fiction.

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