HÄGG, Th.,
The Novel in Antiquity.
University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles, 1983. X,264p. ills.(B&W photographs, line drawings, maps). Original brown cloth with dust wrps. 'The mere title, 'The Novel in Antiquity' may come as a surprise to some. And that is the first justification for Hägg's splendid volume. The genre of 'novel' seems to have emerged (...) around the first century B.C. in Greek. It lasted around half a millennium, was revived in Byzantium in the twelfth century, and exercised a remarkable influence on European authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hägg aims to fill in the details of this picture and provide a guide to what the various novels and novel-like animals were like (...). In addition to exploration of the novels and other works of prose fiction, Hägg offers a chapter on 'The Social Background and the First Readers of the Novel' and a chapter on the use of the ancient novel in more modern times (...) whose interest is again maintained by careful selection rather than an attempt to be compendious. (...) This is a very reliable and learned book which is stimulating, beautiful, and outstandingly useful. It is the book the novel needs and which will win converts to the novel.' (KEN DOWDEN in Greece & Rome, 1984, pp.80-81).
€ 30.00
(Antiquarian)