Metalepsis

‘Metalepsis’ is a classical term. Ancient critics, however, only used it within the confines of rhetoric and stylistics to describe certain usages akin to metaphor and metonymy. In the twentieth century, metalepsis was then reframed much more broadly as a crossing of the boundaries that separate distinct narrative worlds. This modern notion of metalepsis, introduced by Gérard Genette, has proved highly insightful for exploring interactions between the worlds of author and text, such as scenarios in fiction—typically postmodern, typically novelistic or cinematic—where an author and a character enter into conversation. Yet metalepsis has a much greater potential to address all sorts of transgressions between ‘worlds’ or ‘levels’, not only in postmodern but also pre-modern literature. If metalepsis consists fundamentally in the breaking down of barriers, to what sort of barriers and what sort of transgressions can the concept be fruitfully applied? Can it be used within approaches other than narratology? Does metalepsis require recognizable levels of reality and fictionality, and if so, what role might be played by other planes, such as the past, the mythical, or the divine? What form does metalepsis take in less obviously ‘narrative’ genres (such as lyric poetry)? And how should it be understood in visual media (such as vase-painting)? As classicists begin to examine what metalepsis might mean in ancient literature, this volume uses such questions to consider where metalepsis can most productively join other critical concepts in classical research, and how explorations of ancient metalepsis might change, refine, or extend our understanding of the concept itself.