'He set up a stele of beryl': Scrutinising Identity through Space and Time in Fictional Imperial Travel Narratives

我提议研究在帝国文学中虚构旅行是如何以及为什么重建文化史的。在我打算研究的文本中(包括卢西安的《真实历史和阿纳卡西斯》，菲洛斯特罗斯的《阿波罗尼乌斯的生活》，查里顿的《卡利洛》和书信体小说，如《奇翁》和《布鲁图斯》)，涉及旅行的虚构叙事与文化历史关怀密不可分。例如，卢西恩与荷马的相遇虚构地重建了对荷马文学史的理解，因为他通过VH 2.28中的石碑将他的伪帝国主张置于福岛上。同样，像阿波罗尼乌斯和阿纳卡西斯这样的人物也成为虚构的旅行者，他们的传统通过他们在旅行中的虚构遭遇而被重塑。在这些文本中，旅行到帝国文学中的虚构空间是考察希腊罗马文化史的一种方法。帝国时期是旅行小说研究的丰富时代，因为罗马帝国复杂的个人身份和对‘无限’空间的征服(惠特马什，2012)意味着旅行到边缘，特别是虚构的边缘，迫使旅行者承认真正的帝国空间的局限性。真实旅行对身份边界的探索已经得到了很好的探索，人们已经认识到，“真实的”旅行叙事处理的是文化身份和帝国空间的交叉。对于埃尔斯纳(1994)来说，Pausanias使用纪念碑作为“一个框架，通过它来探索……自我的身份”，作为希腊被摧毁的荣耀，与他作为希腊罗马公民的身份相对照。帝国小说化也被研究过：N.Machlaigh(2008,2014)认为古代小说关注的是它自身的虚构性和古典主义的虚构过程。然而，虚构空间在旅行中的具体作用被相对忽视，没有研究到在一系列虚构文本中，前往虚构空间的旅行是如何促进对罗马帝国下的文化身份的重新思考的。本研究将探讨罗马帝国与虚构在这些叙事中如何互动，以及帝国的存在如何塑造旅行小说的文化关怀。这将有助于更好地理解帝国旅行叙事中的虚构如何提供一个无限的想象力舞台，通过在这些替代的、通常是外围的空间中对希腊-罗马文化史进行“压力测试”，来探索罗马霸权的“不可侵犯的帝国”和罗马身份。虽然我对虚构空间的方法将受到N.Machlaigh和van den Heever(2018)工作的启发，但其他学科的方法可以提供关于虚构的旅行和空间如何与文化历史和身份相互作用的新视角，特别是为科幻(SF)和历史虚构开发的那些。Viglas(2016)已经应用了从SF到Lucian的VH的理论方法，但这项研究的方法认识到，这些虚构空间的一个关键组成部分是它们本质上也是历史的。克斯莱克(2007，科幻)和卢卡奇(1920，历史小说)都认为，虚构中的空间(克斯莱克)和时间(卢卡奇)差距被操纵来询问读者的现实，无论是地球还是现在。在这项研究中将这些结合起来，将揭示虚构的空间是如何成为历史文化工场的，通过对时间和空间的审视来重构希腊-罗马身份。

I propose to study how and why fictionalising travel in imperial literature reconstitutes cultural history. In the texts I propose to study (which include Lucian's True History and Anacharsis, Philostratus' Life of Apollonius, Chariton's Callirhoe and the epistolary novels such Chion and Brutus), fictional narratives involving travel are inextricable from culturalhistorical concerns. For example, Lucian's encounter with Homer fictionally reconstitutes an understanding of Homeric literary history as he stakes his pseudo-imperial claim upon the Isles of the Blessed via the stele in VH 2.28. Similarly, figures such as Apollonius and Anacharsis become fictional travellers, whose traditions are reshaped through their fictional encounters during travel. In these texts, travel to fictional spaces in imperial literature is a method of examining Greco-Roman cultural history. The imperial period is a rich age for the study of travel fiction, since the Roman empire's complication of personal identities and conquest of 'infinite' space (Whitmarsh, 2012) means that travel to peripheries, particularly fictional peripheries, forces the traveller to acknowledge the limits of real imperial space. Real travel's exploration of identity's boundaries has been well-explored, and it has been recognised that 'real' travel narratives deal with intersecting cultural identity and imperial space. For Elsner (1994), Pausanias uses monuments as 'a frame through which to explore... the identity of self' as Greece's ruined glory is drawn against his identity as a Greek Roman citizen.Imperial fictionalisation has also been studied: N. Mheallaigh (2008, 2014) argues that ancient fiction is concerned with its own fictionality and the process of fictionalising Classicism. However, the specific role of fictional spaces in travel is comparatively neglected, with no study of how the unique role of journeys to fictionalised spaces over a range of fictional texts contributed to 'rethinking' cultural identity under the Roman empire. This study will ask how the Roman-imperial and fictional interact in these narratives and how the existence of empire shapes the cultural concerns of travel fiction. This will contribute to a greater appreciation of how fictionalisation in imperial travel narratives provides a limitless imaginative arena for probing the Roman hegemonic 'imperium sine fine' alongside GrecoRoman identity, via the 'stress-testing' of Greco-Roman cultural history in these alternative, often peripheral, spaces. Whilst my approach to fictionalised space will be informed by N. Mheallaigh and van den Heever's (2018) work, approaches from other disciplines can provide new perspectives about how fictional travel and space interacts with cultural-history and identity, specifically those developed for Science Fiction (SF) and Historical Fiction. Viglas (2016) has already applied theoretical approaches from SF to Lucian's VH, but this study's approach recognises that a crucial component of these fictional spaces is that they are also historical in nature. Both Kerslake (2007, SF) and Lukács (1920, historical fiction) argue that spatial (Kerslake) and temporal (Lukács) gaps in fictionalisation are manipulated to interrogate the reader's reality, whether it be Earth or the present. Uniting these in this study will reveal how fictional spaces become historico-cultural workshops, reconstituting Greco-Roman identity via the scrutiny of time and space together.