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GEORGIADOU, A. and D.H.J. LARMOUR, Lucian's Science Fiction Novel True Histories. Interpretation and Commentary. Brill, Leiden (...), 1998. XI,254p. Original grey gilt titled cloth with dust wrappers. Series: Mnemosyne, Supplements, 179. ‘A satisfactory commentary on Lucian’s 'True Histories' is both an urgent need and an impossibility. In his preface Lucian signals that every detail of the narrative is a humorous allusion (…) to unnamed earlier poets, historians and philosophers (…). The problem of course is that much of the material alludes to is not extant (…), and the reader is continually left with a sense of parody or pastiche without knowing quite where it is aimed or how to construe its humour. Scholars are left with the options of salvaging what they can of Lucian’s detail, or exploring the important broader issues which the text raises, particularly about the nature of fictional and historical narrative. The two correlative dangers - neither avoided by Georgiadou and Armour - are to accumulate irrelevant parallels on the merest sniff of a similarity, or to construct an interpretative ‘key’, which can conjure explanations of elusive detail out of a vacuum. Some of Lucian’s parody of philosophers is obviously directed at allegories, as a type of incredible fiction. G. And L.’s ‘key’ is that the VH is not just an intermittent parodic allegory of ‘the search for philosophical truth, with many of the bizarre creatures and incidents functioning as humorous allusions to philosophers and their theories.’ This is apparently based on a misreading of the crucial phrase quoted above. (…) This commentary is clearly the result of much basic leg-work, and scholars will use it (with caution, one hopes), as a short-cut to relevant material. (J.R. MORGAN in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2001, pp.190-191). € 80.00 (Antiquarian) ISBN: 9789004106673