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

我打算研究帝国文学中虚构的旅行如何以及为什么重构了文化史。在我打算研究的文本中（包括卢西恩的《真实历史》和《阿纳恰尔西斯》，菲洛斯特拉托斯的《阿波罗尼乌斯的一生》，查里顿的《卡利罗》和书信体小说，如《基翁》和《布鲁图斯》），涉及旅行的虚构叙事与文化历史问题密不可分。例如，卢西安与荷马的相遇虚构地重建了对荷马文学史的理解，因为他在VH 2.28中通过石碑对祝福岛提出了伪帝国的要求。同样，像阿波罗尼乌斯和阿纳卡西斯这样的人物也成为了虚构的旅行者，他们的传统通过旅行中虚构的遭遇而被重塑。在这些文本中，帝国文学中的虚构空间旅行是研究希腊罗马文化史的一种方法。帝国时期是研究旅行小说的丰富时期，因为罗马帝国个人身份的复杂性和对“无限”空间的征服（Whitmarsh, 2012）意味着前往边缘地区，特别是虚构的边缘地区，迫使旅行者承认真实帝国空间的局限性。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”旅行叙事处理的是交叉的文化身份和帝国空间。对于埃尔斯纳（1994）来说，包萨尼亚将纪念碑作为“一个框架，通过它来探索……自我的身份是希腊被毁的荣耀，这与他作为希腊罗马公民的身份是对立的。帝国的虚构化也被研究过：N. Mheallaigh（2008, 2014）认为古代小说关注的是其自身的虚构性以及将古典主义虚构化的过程。然而，虚构空间在旅行中的具体作用相对被忽视，没有研究如何在一系列虚构文本中虚构空间的独特作用有助于“重新思考”罗马帝国下的文化身份。本研究将探讨罗马帝国和虚构故事如何在这些叙事中相互作用，以及帝国的存在如何塑造旅行小说的文化关注点。这将有助于更好地欣赏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”，探索罗马霸权“帝国至上”和希腊罗马身份。虽然我对虚构空间的研究方法将受到N. Mheallaigh和van den Heever（2018）作品的启发，但来自其他学科的方法可以为虚构的旅行和空间如何与文化历史和身份相互作用提供新的视角，特别是那些为科幻小说（SF）和历史小说开发的方法。Viglas（2016）已经将科幻小说的理论方法应用到Lucian的虚拟现实中，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年，科幻小说）和Lukács（1920年，历史小说）都认为，虚构中的空间（克斯莱克）和时间（Lukács）差距被操纵来质问读者的现实，无论是地球还是现在。在这项研究中，将这些结合起来，将揭示虚构的空间如何成为历史文化工作坊，通过时间和空间的共同审视，重建希腊罗马的身份。

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.