English Fiction and the Ancient Novel

This chapter consider the emergence of novelistic texts from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries in light of the earlier efflorescence of prose fiction from classical antiquity. It argues that the links between the two are genetic as well as morphological. The ultimate point of origin for romance and novel is the Odyssey, a verse epic which amplifies the martial themes of the Iliad to include voyages, shipwrecks, fabulous and erotic encounters, and domestic strife and resolution. Setting aside beast fables of the Aesopic kind, this chapter identifies four distinct, if interfluent, streams within ancient prose fiction: the epical or sub-epical; the pseudo-historical; the Menippean. Finally there is the Milesian category: short stories, ultimately deriving from the lost Milesiaka of Aristides of Miletus, characterized by erotic or supernatural content, with a twist or sting in the tail.