Lucian: Three Menippean Fantasies

A handful of fragments is all that remains of the writings of Menippus, the third-century BCE provocateur of the Greek Cynic movement. The Western literary tradition knows him through Lucian, the Greek satirist who lived and worked four hundred years later.

Included in this book are Joel Relihans lively English translations of Lucians three reanimations of Menippusfantastic narratives and comic dialogues set in heaven and hell:

• Menippus; or, The Consultation of the Corpses
• Icaromenippus; or, A Man above the Clouds
• The Colloquies of the Corpses (Dialogues of the Dead)

For the first time in over fifty years, these works are assembled in a unified format to tell a particular story: Lucians evolving understanding of the philosophical and literary potential of the person, productions, and purposes of Menippus.

Not only is it time to give Lucians Menippus a fresh look and a thorough reevaluation, but also to consider how Lucians imitations and innovations adumbrate, illuminate, and complicate the history of that enigmatic genre, Menippean satire. See more