Book contents
9 - Romance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2009
Summary
The romance genre is represented in Cretan literature of the mature period (c. 1580–1669) by a single work, the Erotokritos of Vitsentzos Kornaros. However, there are several works in Greek dating from the immediately preceding centuries which belong to the category of ‘romance’ and which were certainly known in Crete (and in same cases reworked in Cretan versions). Furthermore, the genre has a lengthy and continuous history in Greek, a brief survey of which will provide the necessary background to our examination of the Erotokritos.
The genre of romance, now increasingly referred to by the more modern, inclusive, term ‘novel’ (the terminology in any case postdates the works themselves), is essentially a creation of the Hellenistic age. The earliest surviving novel is Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe, probably dating from the first century B.C.; but the best known and most influential examples of the genre date from late antiquity, from the period known as the ‘Second Sophistic’, when Greek culture experienced a significant revival under the Roman Empire. Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, the Ephesiaca of Xenophon of Ephesus and Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius all belong, as far as may be determined, to the second century A.D. Somewhat later (perhaps in the fourth century) Heliodorus wrote his influential Ethiopica, the longest and stylistically most complex of the ancient novels.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Literature and Society in Renaissance Crete , pp. 205 - 238Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
- 3
- Cited by