Mark Payne, Theocritus and theInvention of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. viii, 183. ISBN978-0-521-86577-7. GBP 50.00.
The bucolic poetry ofTheocritus is the first literature to invent a fully fictional world that isnot an image of reality but an alternative to it. It is thereby distinguishedfrom the other Idylls and from Hellenistic poetry as a whole. This bookexamines these poems in the light of ancient and modern conceptions offictionality. It explores how access to this fictional world is mediated byform and how this world appears as an object of desire for the characterswithin it. The argument culminates in a new reading of Idyll 7, where ProfessorPayne discusses the encounter between author and fictional creation in the poemand its importance for the later pastoral tradition. Close readings ofTheocritus, Callimachus, Hermesianax and the Lament for Bion are supplementedwith parallels from modern contemporary fiction and an extended discussion ofthe heteronymic poetry of Fernando Pessoa.
• Offers a new theoreticalapproach which provides a better understanding of the origins of the pastoral genre• Explicitly comparative, making connections to other Hellenistic poetry and tomodern contemporary fiction • Translates all Greek and Latin
Contents
Introduction: in the realmsof the unreal
1. The pleasures of the imaginary
2. The presence of thefictional world
3. Becoming bucolic
4. From fiction to metafiction
Conclusion: the future of a fiction.
(Informations fournis par l'éditeur)