ELIZABETH WICKETT, Seers, Saints and Sinners: The Oral Tradition of Upper Egypt

IRENE DE JONG (ed.), Space in Ancient Greek Literature: Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative, Volume Three. 2012. Pp. xv, 610. Brill. Hardcover, 184.00 [euro] ISBN 9789004222571 Whereas the former two volumes in the Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative series were devoted to concepts which have received a good deal of critical attention ('time' and 'narrators, narratees, and narratives'), the narratology of space has by comparison been rather neglected, and one of the goals of this book is to give this methodology a more solid grounding for the study of ancient texts than it has had hitherto. An Introduction is followed by 29 chapters on the use and presentation of space in a generous selection of canonical authors, ranging from Homer to Heliodorus. In the words of the preface, the contributors were set the threefold task of 'see[ing] which of the aspects of the device under consideration (set out in the Introduction) are found in his or her author; ... describ[ing] how this author handles those aspects; and ... relat[ing] his handling to that of earlier and later authors' (p. ix). Although the editor admits that constraints of space and methodology tended to militate against detailed consideration of the final issue, the volume as a whole, and groups of essays on particular subjects, gives a sense of how representations of space in ancient literature developed across periods and genres, as well as how it was represented by individual authors. Both students and researchers will derive benefit from the individual essays as introductions to the topic of space in given authors. There is, however, not much here that more seasoned critics will find new or challenging, and while readers may find little with which to disagree strongly, at least some, I suspect, will be left wishing for more interpretative meat on the methodological bones. All the essays examine their subjects thoroughly, giving plentiful citations of primary texts and making numerous valid observations, but the volume's methodological constraints limit the opportunity for connecting purely narratological points with wider interpretative questions. It might be objected that this is an unfair criticism to level at a book which sets out to provide an overview of a topic; yet while this objective is admirably fulfilled, the volume could have offered deeper and more original reflections on space as a narratological construct without neglecting its more basic goals. Its failure to do so is partly a consequence of the decision (operative across the series) to treat individual authors on a chapter by chapter basis rather than exploiting the vistas that may have been opened up by a more thematic approach. More serious problems are created by the taxonomy laid out in the Introduction and by the taxonomical approach based on this, around which the subsequent analyses are structured: I shall highlight the benefits and shortcomings of this approach by discussing a number of individual contributions. Irene de Jong's Introduction sets out what she considers to be the 'theoretical concepts most useful for an analysis of space in ancient narrative texts' (p. 2). She begins with the distinction between fabula-space and story-space: '[j]ust as we distinguish between fabula-time and story-time ... we may distinguish between fabula-space and story-space: the fabula space would be a (theoretically) complete depiction of the location(s) of a narrative, while the story-space is the actual space as the text presents it to us' (pp. 2-3). This analogy is based on the constructedness of the temporal and spatial modes described: story-time is a construct of the text, not simply a purely temporal event in the reader's consciousness, and story-space is likewise a projected fictionality. More could have been said, however, about the issues which surround the distinction between story-spaces and the real spaces to which they relate. A particular focus of recent criticism, especially prevalent in postcolonialist studies, has been the examination of the ideological inflections to which space is subject when constructed in narratives, a critical issue which is affected by the familiarity (or unfamiliarity) with the relevant spaces and landscapes expected in readers. …