Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

9-1986

Publication Title

The Classical World

Volume

80

Issue

1

Pages

54-55

Publisher Name

Johns Hopkins University Press

Abstract

In this book the author of Eros Sophistes hopes to afford laymen an introduction to the ancient novelist as serious artist, while to specialists he addresses technical discussions about the novel's origins and its relation to far older texts as well as about the impact of recently discovered papyri and cuneiform tablets upon our understanding of the genre's development. It is difficult to write a study which will speak simultaneously to both neophyte and scholar, doubly difficult when the subject matter until recently has been neglected even by the professional, who tended to assign Longus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus to the literary periphery. Disappointingly, this book is only a mixed success: the layman will find much bewildering, while the specialist will find its positive aspects hedged with reservation.

Comments

Author Posting. © Classical Association of the Atlantic States, 1986. This article is posted by permission of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States for personal use, not for redistribution. It was published in The Classical World, Volume 80, Issue 1, Sept.-Oct., 1986. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4349982

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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