Abstract
This essay explores a set of connections between philosophy and prose fiction. It combines a somewhat Foucauldian outlook on the question of genealogical filiation with a Bakhtinian interest in polyphony and heteroglossia. This is an overview of the various possibilities for the emplotment of the story of knowledge. The structural details of these plots inform the quality of the knowledge that eventuates from them. In coarse terms, I am asking what it means to insist upon the novelistic qualities of Plato while simultaneously thinking about the Platonic qualities of novels. This highly selective survey starts with classical Athens, touches upon Plutarch and Lucian, and then lingers with narrative prose fiction more specifically by examining the texts of Chariton, Achilles Tatius, Heliodorus, Apuleius, and Petronius.
Highlights
Emplotting KnowledgeThe subject of this journal is “Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures.” And this issue takes as its topic the schools
I am not going to write about Latin literature as if it were a prologue to European literature
In order to do so we will need to think about the cultural antecedents that were recast within the Roman era
Summary
The subject of this journal is “Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Literatures.” And this issue takes as its topic the schools. He becomes a member of the unfooled ‘smart set’, a man who can stand apart from and above his contemporaries This is a quasi-dialogic moment and one that can readily be distinguished from the dialogues of ascent that we nd in Plato, but the free play of the encounter between voices that a richer dialogism would provide has been severely constrained by the selective and interested investments made by these erudite players of a speci c social game. Lucian’s works are full of what one might think of as medial forms between philosophical engagement, erudite table-talk, and prose ction He has dialogues of the gods, dialogues of the dead, and dialogues of courtesans. On the one hand we roam far and wide and productively, but, on the other, we never lose sight of the fact that a certain kind of educated person is writing and, by implication, reading these works.
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