Kathryn CHEW Theorizing the Ancient Novel

Ancient novels defy current theoretical classifications.  Philostratus (Epistle 66) charges that they were composed by nobodies for, presumably, nobodies.  The idea that the novels belong to the more popular, less sophisticated sort of literature persists even into modern times (Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination; Anderson, The Novel in the Ancient World 1996).  Papyrological and economic evidence however suggests that novels could not enjoy the sort of popularity associated with low literature (Stephens, and Bowie, The Search for the Ancient Novel 1994). Scholarly consensus attributes readership of the ancient novel to a wealthy, educated, male elite (Bowie, TNAW).  Accordingly, scholars of the novels have treated them as high literature, reflecting the values and beliefs of upper class Roman society (Perkins, The Suffering Self 1995; Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride 1996).  Yet others like Pervo (TNAW) have insisted that early Christian literature, which addressed a wider audience, should be categorized with ancient novels.  How can novels be both elite and popular at the same time?

To synthesize such diverse evidence, we must realize two things.  First, the ancient novel was not a canonical literary genre, and as such it is not formally attached to a specific attendant social milieu.  Secondly, the appellation "popular" projects too much modern sensibility onto our conceptualization of the ancient genre; "personal" rather than "popular" best describes the thematic content of the ancient novel.  And what is personal need not be popular.

Early Christian adaptation of the novel can be understood in the following way.  As an unofficial genre unencumbered by tradition, the novel was the most convenient form for these writers to make their own, and its ability to deal with personal perspectives made it attractive for spreading the Christian message.  Once Christian writers borrow the novel form and establish their own literary tradition, no more novels appear.  This may be because Heliodorus left the genre nowhere to go (Hunter, Studies in Heliodorus 1998).  Alternatively, Christian appropriation of this literary form may have made it unattractive for other writers to continue to use the form.  Papyrological evidence indicates that Christian literary material was written by and presumably for a lower class than that of novels and other classical literature (Stephens 1994).  The sociologist Gans (Popular Culture and High Culture 1999) argues that when an author/creator appropriates for a lower class an elite form that has been abandoned by elites, then often author/creators for elites eschew that form thereafter as tainted.  It would seem that this is what happens to the novel &endash; what starts out as a functionally elite genre is monopolized by a group of Christian lower class writers; after Christianity becomes the dominant social power, this novel genre becomes popularized by association, which is how we inherit it today.