The “erotic” Greek novels place at the centre of the plot an orthodox, heterosexual, monogamous, and lifelong love affair between a young man and a maiden. By contrast, the so-called “open” or “fringe” novels (a group of diverse works...
moreThe “erotic” Greek novels place at the centre of the plot an orthodox, heterosexual, monogamous, and lifelong love affair between a young man and a maiden. By contrast, the so-called “open” or “fringe” novels (a group of diverse works which share some basic common traits, such as a linear biographical narrative, non-organic structure, a trickster protagonist, the mixture of many storytelling genres, and a fluid textual transmission) treat eros in a starkly different manner: love stories are pushed to the margins of the narrative, in peripheral episodes or inserted tales; and instead of the idealized, model love of the erotic novels, there is a variety of deviant passions, forbidden liaisons, or sexual aberrations. The creators of the “open” texts consciously adopted the exact opposite practice than the erotic novels, in order to clearly demarcate their genre as a different mode of fictional storytelling. The pathology of love thus became a marker of generic identity.
Four examples are adduced from the corpus of the “open” novels to illustrate this proposition. In the Alexander Romance the main narrative is completely devoid of eroticism, even in episodes which would have been suitable for such treatment. The only love affair is the adulterous liaison between Nectanebo and Queen Olympias, an unlawful and immoral relationship which leads to the birth of Alexander. This is placed in the preliminaries of the story, provides the starting point for the plot, but has no further reverberations after the initial chapters. Similarly, the Life of the Philosopher Secundus begins with a scene of near-incest, which motivates the rest of the narrative. The Historia Apollonii regis Tyri reworks some of the standard themes of the canonical erotic romances (the idealized monogamous love, the lovers’ separation and reunion, the maiden who struggles to preserve her virginity) but arranges them in unusual new combinations and distorts their form. This idiosyncratic fragmentation of the traditional love plot is prefaced by a horrendous episode of father-daughter incest, which sets the action in motion but is forgotten afterwards. Finally, the Life of Aesop includes a series of tales about various aspects of perverse eroticism (exhibitionism, nymphomania, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, rape, incest) — a veritable anthology of deviant sex dispersed through the narrative. These episodes are either inserted paradigmatic stories or secondary incidents without a central role in the plot. In these respects, the Life completely overturns the standard pattern of the erotic novels.
