Resumen de Romancing the Classics: the Hellenic Standard and its Vicissitudes under the Empire
The title of this essay refers to the context of its original presentation at a Yale conference (2012), entitled ‘Marginality, Canonicity, Passion.’ My contribution, now updated and revised for this publication, was meant to introduce to a varied audience the ancient Greek novel and the vicissitudes of its reception, presented as a case study of changing tastes and values in contemporary attitudes and interests. It engages such issues as chronology and origins; sex, gender, and erotics; the influence of other cultures (Egypt and the Near East), along with concepts of Hellenismos and paideia, to focus finally on the case of Heliodorus before considering the future of prose fiction as situated between canonicity and marginality
