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

到目前为止，古希腊文学的叙事研究主要集中在文学文本的几个方面，如声音（谁在文本中说话），时间（故事中事件的时间顺序，持续时间和频率），空间（故事动作的设置），表征（文学人物的构建过程）和聚焦（故事中事件相关的观点）。对叙事文本中人物的虚构心理（包括内心生活的各个方面--认知、知觉、性格、情感、信念和情绪）的研究则少之又少。这是第一次提出的研究建议，通过对希腊帝国叙事中社会和集体思想的（重新）呈现和功能进行一本书的研究来填补这一空白。更具体地说，拟议的项目旨在研究古希腊史学和古希腊帝国时期小说中人物思想之间的相互作用，特别关注人物思考其他人物心理状态和读心过程的能力，以及他们的“心理关系”（即思维连接，共享或集体的关系）。这项工作设想将包括两个选定的案例研究，Chariton的Callirhoe和Herodian的马库斯后的帝国历史的持续密切的阅读;它将检查由说书人使用的具体叙事技巧，以描绘他们的人物的心理生活作为外部表现，社会和共享，以及社会和集体认知的作用，在情节的推进和文学人物的建设。它还将探讨两种类型的意识表现程度和技巧之间的共性或差异，从而推进古代虚构与非虚构叙事之间关系的研究;它将运用认知的观点来关注帝国时期的个体与集体，自我与人格的概念。

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.