Social Minds in the Ancient Greek Novel and Imperial Greek Historiography: Studies of Chariton and Herodian

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Narrative studies of ancient Greek literature have focused so far on several aspects of literary texts such as voice (who speaks in a text), time (the temporal order, duration, and frequency of events in a story), space (the setting of the action of a story), characterisation (the process of construction of literary characters), and focalisation (the point of view from which events in a story are related). Much less attention has been paid to the study of the fictional minds (embracing all aspects of inner life—cognition, perception, dispositions, feelings, beliefs, and emotions) of characters in narrative texts. This first-time research proposal suggests filling this gap through a book-length study of the (re)presentation and function(s) of social and collective minds in Imperial Greek narratives. More specifically, the proposed project seeks to examine the interaction between the minds of characters in ancient Greek historiography and the ancient Greek novel of the Imperial period, focusing especially on characters’ ability to think about other characters’ mental states and mind-reading processes as well as their ‘intermental relationships’ (i.e. relationships where thinking is joined, shared, or collective). The work envisaged will consist of sustained close readings of two selected case studies, Chariton’s Callirhoe and Herodian’s History of the Empire after Marcus; it will examine the specific narrative techniques used by storytellers to depict their characters’ mental lives as externally manifested, social and shared as well as the role of social and collective cognition in the advancement of plot and the construction of literary characters. It will also explore commonalities or contrasts between the degree and techniques of consciousness representation in the two genres, thus advancing research on the relation between fictional and non-fictional narration in antiquity; and it will apply cognitive insights to concerns about the conception of individuality and collectivity, selfhood and personality during the Imperial period.