Epic, Novel and the Progress of Antiquity

Ahuvia Kahane

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781472504081
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

This book rethinks the characterization of two highly contrastive forms of ancient literary tradition - epic and novel - and re-frames their function as dynamic points of reference in the history of ideas and in our understanding of the interface between antiquity and the modern. Epic and novel have often been construed in terms of sharp contrasts: temporally, with the epic anchored in the canonical beginnings of classical literature, as opposed to the novel, which rises only late in the ancient era; hierarchically, with epic regularly occupying the canonical core while the novel often resided in the periphery; and in terms of specific highly contrasting attributes: 'sublime' vs. 'subversive'; an aspiration to 'oral' song vs. an intimate association with book culture; heroic vs. 'anti-heroic' or 'mock-heroic'.

Ahuvia Kahane argues for the fallibility of each of several major differential attributes, to the point of generic disintegration. He then constructs a new understanding of epic and novel in antiquity as part of a more fragile, dynamic framework, governed by intertextuality and openness on the one hand, and by fragmented interpretive traditions on the other.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle page
• Also available from Bloomsbury
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Form, History and Time: Defining a Problem
• 2 Method, System, Principle
• 3 Wholes and Fragments: Epic, Novel and Historical Consciousness
• 4 The Matter of Form: Verse and Prose
• 5 Entangled Expression
• 6 Discourse Cutting into the Form of Things
• 7 An Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Passages
• General Index