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

到目前为止，古希腊文学的叙事学研究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(故事中事件的背景)、特征(文学人物的构建过程)和聚焦(故事中事件相关的角度)。对叙事文本中人物的虚构心理(包括内心生活的方方面面--认知、感知、性情、情感、信仰和情感)的研究则少之又少。这项首次研究建议通过一本书长的研究来填补这一空白，研究对象是希腊帝国叙事中社会和集体思想的(重新)呈现和功能(S)。更具体地说，这个拟议的项目试图研究古希腊史学中人物的心灵与帝国时期的古希腊小说之间的互动，特别关注人物思考其他人物的心理状态和读心过程的能力，以及他们的“心理关系”(即思考是连接、共享或集体的关系)。预计的工作将包括持续仔细阅读两个选定的案例研究，查里顿的卡里洛和希罗德的马库斯之后的帝国历史；它将考察讲故事的人使用的特定叙事技巧，以描绘他们的人物的心理生活，作为外部表现，社会和共享的，以及社会和集体认知在情节推进和文学人物塑造中的作用。它还将探索这两种流派在意识表现程度和表现手法上的共性或对比，从而推动古代虚构叙事与非虚构叙事关系的研究；并将认知洞察力应用于对帝国时期个人与集体、自我与人格概念的关注。

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.