ancient greece
ancient literary criticism
ancient rome
Category=NHAH
Category=QRJ
christian gospel
christianity
classical literary criticism
classicism
comic literature
early christian era
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
etruscheria
european history
fiction
fiction and history
fictional truths
greek historiography
greek history
greek literature
historical truths
holy roman empire
jews
judaism
latin literature
literary studies
literature
pagan prose fiction
religion
religious literature
romance
secular literature
society
travel narratives
Product details
- ISBN 9780520085459
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 02 Aug 1994
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Using pagan prose fiction produced in Greek and Latin during the early Christian era, Bowersock investigates the complex relationship among perceived and presented 'historical' and 'fictional' truths. Bowersock's superb lecturing style is successfully transferred into writing with force and eloquence, as he weaves accounts from a wide range of sources into his text, illuminating social attitudes of the period and persuasively arguing that fiction of the period was influenced by the emerging Christian Gospel narratives. In the second half of the first century emerges a new kind of fiction including outlandish tales of travel, romance and comic novels. Bowersock concentrates on secular literature, illuminating not only its literary motifs, but also reconstructing the societal context as one engrossed in fabrications and all kinds of revisions or rewriting. Using these less familiar materials as his points of reference, he reads into familiar Christian material, making linkages and casting new light on familiar subjects, as well as providing some provocative interpretations of familiar Christian texts.
Bowersock uses close historical and literary analyses of specific passages of works, and pays attention to larger and more general issues and questions around the relationship between fiction and history and how we read them. This book will be of basic intellectual concern to all raised in the environment of Christian belief.
G. W. Bowersock is Professor of Ancient History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Among his many books are Roman Arabia (1983) and Hellenism in Late Antiquity (1990).
