La Antigüedad novelada.

Las novelas históricas sobre el mundo griego y romano by Carlos

García Gual
Review by: Ma. de la Purificación Nieto Hernández
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Summer, 1999), pp. 107-109
Published by: Springer
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BookReviews 107

(210). One element of the aforementioneddiscontinuitywas a general shift from one-

year leases typical of Egyptian leases persisting through the Ptolemaic period (253),to
longer-termleases (typically four year) from the middle of the first century onward. In
this shift R. concludes there is "a general correlationbetween the short duration leases
and a high social status of the tenant in comparisonwith the landlord" (209), and yet,
"the four year 'norm' for lease contractseven in the second and early third centuries
seems less a reflection of the precarious positions of tenants in Egypt, than of their
continuing independence" (259).
While not following all of the paths she opens, R. certainly shows the rich poten-
tial for anyone wishing to pursue questions of acculturation, Hellenization,
Romanization,etc. Throughouther work, R. points again and again to the appropria-
tion of traditionsby the Romans, and reworking them when convenient or jettisoning
them altogether.
The data on which R. draws her conclusions is arrangedin the two appendices.
The first comprises nineteen tables, e.g., classificationof land, public land in the nome,
provision of wills, composition of dowries, land prices, duration of leases. The second
appendix is a summarizationof 143 known Oxyrhynchiteland leases.
There are remarkablyfew problems with the text, e.g., in Table 1A the data for
the village of Petne is lacking (middle toparchy and 297 dr. paid). However, a few
words are appropriateconcerning errors that are not the responsibility of the author,
not serious but particularlyannoying since the volume comes from Oxford University
Press. For example, the inadequate size of the maps,, lack of a page number for the
glossary on page xi, incorrectalignment of columns in Tables 5 and 6, and the shaded
area lacking in Table6.

BruceE. Nielsen
The Jewish TheologicalSeminary,New York

Carlos GarciaGual, LaAntigiiedadnovelada.Lasnovelashist6ricassobreel mundogriegoy

romano(Barcelona:EditorialAnagrama,1995),276 pp.

The historical novel continues to enjoy these days an enviable vitality, attracting
the attention of a significant readership.Its popular success, however, does not trans-
late into a greater interest on the part of critics and scholars in works of this kind.
Literaryprofessionals,including bookstorepersonnel, still have misgivings about them
and tend to relegate them to the ranks of such "subgenres"as police and detective
novels, horror stories, science fiction, etc., which are generally considered second-class
literature--mere entertainment,frivolous, or superficial. There are, to be sure, some
notable exceptions, both among authors who have dedicated their energies to this
genre, and among critics. Among the latter there stands out Georg Lukacs' well-
known though now somewhat antiquatedstudy, DerHistorischeRoman(Berlin1955;in
English as TheHistoricalNovel,trans.S. Mitchell,London 1962).
These are the considerationsfrom which the new book by ProfessorGarciaGual
(Complutense University in Madrid) takes its start. The book is addressed to the
general public and adopts the tone of an essay ratherthan a technical work: "I would
like this book to be a contribution,with luck a coherent and enlightened one but free
of excessive pedantry, to the study of a genre that in general finds little favor among

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108 Journalof theClassicalTraditionISummer1999
International

literary critics:a contributionto a curious departmentof the novel and perhaps to the
history of the reception of novels, without neglecting to be as well an essay on the
survival of the ancient world through images which owe as much to fantasy as to
historical memory" (p. 273). The book consists of four sections, corresponding to the
several moments in the development of this species of narrative,and it sketches out a
continuous history of the historical novel from its origins to the present day. This
survey, indeed, is one of its greatest strengths.
The first part, in addition to defining the author'sown objectivesand interests, is
given over to an analysis of several ancient Greek novels as historical novels, since,
according to G.G., the earliest beginnings of the genre are to be found here, and not in
Romanticismor, more specifically,in the historicalnovels of Sir WalterScott, as Lukics
would have it: "Inthe larger sense, the first Greeknovel that we know of, Chaereasand
Callirhoe(first century A.D.), was already an 'historicalnovel'" (p. 16). So too, accord-
ing to G.G., are the AlexanderRomanceof Pseudo-Callisthenesand the Lifeof Apollonius
of Tyana,by Philostratus.Then, in the second part, G.G.examines the continuation and
evolution of such novels during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance,and the eighteenth
century. Here he recovers works and authors that are now nearly forgotten, such as
Finelon, Barthelemy, and Lantier (whose novels are consistently structured about a
voyage), culminating in The Martyrsof Christianity(Les martyrs,ou Le triomphede la
religionchretienneby Chateaubriand[1809]), which G.G. considers quite correctly as
the transition to the nineteenth century.
It is with Romanticism,however, that the historicalnovel acquiresits full force as
a genre, precisely because "only then do we find a truly historiographicalvision wed-
ded with sentimental fiction" (p. 123). G.G. thus dedicates the third and by far the
largest section of his book to the nineteenth century,when the great surge in historical
novels occurred. The issue that takes center stage in the narratives of this era is the
confrontation between Christians and pagans and the triumph of the new religion,
which is represented in an idealized manner. G.G. looks at some of the "classical"
examples (E. Bulwer Lytton's TheLastDays of Pompeiiin 1834, L. Wallace's Ben-Hurin
1880, W. Pater's Marius the Epicureanin 1885, H. Sienkiewiecz's Quo Vadis?in 1886)
and highlights both the manicheanism into which some of the writers lapse (e.g.,
N.P.S. Wiseman's Fabiolain 1854 and J.H. Newman's Callistain 1856, both written by
Catholic cardinals), and the reaction against this tendency which attempts to give a
more positive image of the pagan world of the Empireeven as it unmasks the hypoc-
risy and fanaticism of many Christians:here one may include a few superb examples
of the genre such as Ch. Kingsley's Hypatiain 1853,Anatole France'sThaisin 1890, and
JuliantheApostate(Smert'Bogov/ IulianOtstupnik)by D.S. Merezhkovsky in 1894. This
period also sees efforts to escape from the pedestrian bourgeois environment of the
day, which induced certain authors to turn their gaze upon antiquity (for example,
Gustave Flaubert in his Salammboof 1862). G.G.'s review of the nineteenth century
includes as well a brief chapteron dramaticadaptationsof some of these novels, which
had an enormous success and constitutethe clearprecedentfor the cinematicversions of
the twentiethcentury(G.G.,who makesno pretenseof being exhaustive,confineshimself
to suggesting a few topicswithout developing them more extensively).
The fourth part treats the present century, and, though it is brief, it fulfills its
purpose of suggesting how the genre continues to be dynamic both because of its
capacity to refashion its own contents and especially because it has learned to assimi-
late the "advances" in narrative in general. Thus, it is variations in narrative form,

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BookReviews 109

focus, and point of view that have contributedabove all to producing works of genu-
ine interest, which, while they remain historical, figure among the greatest novels of
our times, such as Hadrian'sMemoirs(Memoiresd'Hadrien,1951)by M. Yourcenar,The
Death of Virgil (Der Tod des Vergil,1945) by H. Broch, and others. G.G. also tries to
provide a "brief typology" that may orient the reader within the rich and varied
panorama of the historical novels. Thus, he distinguishes among "mythological nov-
els," novelistic biographies of great historical figures, stories with a broad historical
ambience, love and adventure novels, and stories of intrigue. The book closes with a
few final considerationsin which the authorevaluates his results, and a terminalNote.
Many novels are summarized and analyzed in this book. The author includes
long quotations (occasionally, too long) from several of them, and judges them not
only in regard to their contents and the way in which they reflect the past, but also
their narrative technique and dramaticqualities. As far as the history of the reception
of the novels goes, which the author considers one of the potential goals of his book,
G.G.'s contributionis more an outline than a thoroughgoingtreatmentof the matter.A
broad and deep study of this subject, which is of great interest, continues to be a
desideratum. The manner in which the past, and especially the prestigious Greco-
Roman past, has been evoked in distinct historicalmoments tells us much about these
periods themselves-their social organization,ideas, values and aspirations-and about
the relation that each of them bears to that past. Simultaneously,these evocations of
the past have served repeatedlyboth to justify actions and situations at the time and to
stimulate or repress new political and social ideas. Just because of their popularity
(many of these novels were great successes with the public and exercised an enormous
influence on generations of readers), historical novels have played a very important
role in this process. Thus, in analyzing these novels it is not just their archaeologizing
reconstructionof places and manners that is of interest-a problem which the better
representativesof the genre, and there are many of them, usually handle quite well-
but also the way in which they representcharacters,provide a vision of certain ethnic
groups as against others, etc. One example is the image that the majorityof the English
Victorian novels give us of women, at the very moment when suffragist movements
and an incipient feminism are emerging in England (we may recall that in 1867 John
StuartMill pronounced in the English Parliamentthe first speech ever delivered before
the house in favor of the vote for women). Another is the latent eroticism that lurks in
many of these supposedly edifying novels, which Hollywood cleverly understood and
accentuated in the film versions. Or again, there is the image that they furnish of the
Jewish people, whose representativesare often described in terms that protractmedi-
aeval Europeanantisemitismand anticipatethat of the twentieth century.
In sum, G.G. provides an exceptionally thorough panorama of the historical
novel, its development as a genre and its numerous sub-types. He acquaints us with
titles that today have been all but forgottenand invites us to read many contemporary
specimens and to reflectmore deeply on them. It is thus the more unfortunatethat the
book contains numerous typographical errors, that it does not include an index, and
that avoiding the traditionalsystem of citation with notes at the foot of the page has
occasionally caused confusion in referencesto other books and authors.

Made la Purificaci6nNieto Hernandez

Department of Classics
Brown University

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