This is the third volume in the Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative series. The format of each volume is identical, with a glossary of narratological terms, an introduction and chapters on individual authors, arranged chronologically by genre. The line-up of ancient authors, which is more or less the same in all three volumes, aims at broad historical and generic coverage. Hesiod is a notable absence in this volume (see A. Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative [2010]).
At 610 pages, the success of the volume rests on justifying the methodology employed and the principles that guide its organisation. In her introduction, D.J. makes a case for the former, but with examples taken from the modern European novel (mostly from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century). These examples suggest that spatial categories in narrative are trans-historical or that the European novel presents them in their purest form. But these implications are not considered. Nor is it clear where ‘the spatial turn’ (p. 2) is located in the history of scholarship, or what the significance of this turn is for the present volume. D.J. states that the aim of the volume is to fill in a historical gap since theorists have overlooked the importance of space in ancient narrative (p. 17). But one thinks of the many structuralist studies – admittedly past their prime – that focus on spatial binaries (e.g. P. Vidal-Naquet, The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World [trans. 1986]). And there is no mention of S. von Reden's influential work on Athenian civic space (‘The Well-Ordered Polis: Topographies of Civic Space’, in P. Cartledge, P. Millett and S. von Reden [edd.], Kosmos, Essays in Order, Conflict and Community in Classical Athens [1998], pp. 170–91).
The glossary of narratological terms is useful but it also reveals the extent to which the terminology can state the obvious, for example ‘close up’ is glossed as ‘when a narrator describes a setting … from close quarters’. The terminology also obscures some basic distinctions such as that between space (as relational) and place (as absolute). T. Rood is one of the few authors to pay close attention to this distinction in his chapter on Herodotus. Throughout the volume, the authors struggle to employ the terminology. Generic differences, as well as the distinction between orally derived and literate forms, also tend to be obscured, even though the book is organised by genre. An exception is T.J.G. Whitmarsh's excellent treatment of space as an inter-textual phenomenon in Philostratus. Overall, however, we are left with the impression that narratology fosters an anatomised approach to a topic that lends itself to a variety of interpretative and comparative modes.
Each chapter is titled by the name of an ancient author and aims at coverage. Coupled with the application of a single methodology, this approach limits a deeper understanding of how space functions in each author; it also tends to repetition, to lists of examples and to treading some well-worn territory. None the less, there is much to be learned; overall the chapters are well researched and many offer new insights. I discuss below several topics that traverse the individual chapters and give a sense of the volume's scope.
Catalogues and lists: beginning with D.J.'s discussion of the catalogue in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo in Part 1, references to catalogues and lists appear in various forms in other chapters. J.J.H. Klooster notes how the Apollonian periplous is ‘strongly reminiscent of Herodotus’ and makes Apollonius' narrative technique ‘more like that of a historian than of an epic poet’ (p. 58). T. Rood makes a persuasive case for the relationship between spatial quantification and political domination in both Herodotus and Polybius; he explores how listing and measuring cities, lands and rivers is a way of exercising both political and military control over them (pp. 132 and 186). In these chapters, catalogues and lists speak to the intersection of form and content in the representation of space and to how this relationship is sorted by genre and relations of power.
Space as characterisation: related to the trope of personification, descriptions of space reveal the ethical dimensions and psychological states of characters. Thus, for example, T. Rood notes how the hardships of crossing the Alps ‘bestialized’ the Carthaginians in Polybius (p. 181), K. de Temmerman discusses the tomb as a ‘psychological landmark’ in Chariton (p. 498) and M.P. de Bakker shows how the locus delicti is a signifier of ethopoiia in Lysias' On the Killing of Eratosthenes (p. 389). Together, these arguments demonstrate the relationship between location and character, not in terms of environment (as in the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places), but as the consequence of a singular event like crossing the Alps, being buried alive in a tomb or confronting an adulterer in one's bedroom.
Objects in space: ‘Description’, D.J. tells us in the introduction, ‘deals with static objects’ as opposed to narration, which deals with ‘events and actions’. She admits that this distinction is often blurred, and this blurring is the source of some compelling arguments for what M.A. Harder, in his discussion of Callimachus' Lock of Berenice, calls ‘the afterlife of objects’ (p. 97). This afterlife is a feature of Pausanias' Periêgêsis in which, as J. Akujärvi argues, the spaces where objects are located are sources of historical narrative. In their first-rate chapter on Josephus' The Jewish War, L. Huitink and J.W. van Henten note how the description of the Temple and sanctuary in Jerusalem works to ‘preserve the memory of a city and a monument which had, by the time of writing, been razed to the ground’ (p. 200). Plotted across space and time, these chapters illustrate the principle of the new materialism, namely, that objects and architectural features in narrative are never static but ‘become figures of thought’ (B. Brown, A Sense of Things: the Object Matter of American Literature [2003], p. 16).
Political space: this topic is not surprisingly most evident in the historians (Part 2). T. Rood shows how Herodotus' focus on the expansion of the Persian empire is related to his perspective from the centre to the periphery (p. 129). As Rood demonstrates, this perspective is maintained even when focalised through the Persians. But political space also crosses genres. In his excellent chapter on Aristophanes, A.M. Bowie shows how political space is bifurcated between city and deme in Acharnians, with the result that Dicaeopolis represents both classes of citizens who suffer in the war. And in one of the most closely argued and comprehensive chapters, K.A. Morgan shows how the palaestra which she describes as ‘Devoted … to the training of the body and conducive to the examination of the mind and pedagogic erotics’, functions as a mediating space in Plato's dialogues; as such it is the place of true, i.e. Socratic, philosophy.
Performative space: this space is principally explored in Parts 4 and 5, on drama and forensic oratory respectively. Both genres oscillate between intra- and extra-textual spaces or between what R. Rehm calls scenic and extra scenic space, the latter defined as civic space. M. Lloyd's observation, ‘Euripides typically concludes his plays by relating the dramatic space to real locations accessible to his audience’ (p. 353), raises the question of how this accessibility, presented in the fictional world of the tragic muthos, compares with or differs from its analogue in history writing. In the orators, as M.P. de Bakker argues, performative space includes landmarks whose mention lends rhetorical weight to the argument and those that must be avoided. Situated between what can and cannot be seen, in other words, performative space turns the spectator into a particular kind of narratee.
Who is the intended audience for this volume? More to the point, will it be useful to scholars who are not adherents of narratology? The answer is a guarded ‘yes’; readers will find much of interest in many of the chapters. The production of the book causes some frustration, however. The index is odd. Place names only mentioned once or twice appear, for example ‘Acherusian Headland’ and ‘Atlantis’. But there are no entries for ‘Hades’ or ‘the underworld’ even though these are found in several chapters. And while ‘description’ is found in the glossary of narratological terms, it is far too general to be useful as an entry in the index. In short, a more useful index would be determined by the content of the chapters rather than the methodology. The large number of typos, misspellings (‘Bahktinian’ for Bakhtinian, p. 442) and missing words is distracting.
