This is the fifth volume in a series of ‘Actes du colloque’ about the ancient and Byzantine novel. The present collection is the result of a conference which took place in October 2009 at the Classics department of the University François-Rabelais in Tours, dedicated to the relation between men and gods.
Even though strictly allegorical interpretations of the ancient novels like those of R. Merkelbach are not very popular nowadays, the studies of the sacred in the novel still constitute an expanding field of research (cf. the chapter ‘Religion’ by F. Zeitlin in the Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel [2008]). The editors of the volume at hand do not specify their subject or give a definition of ‘the religious’, but include several aspects of the field, as stated in their brief foreword: ‘… cette littérature fût envisagée sous l'angle des croyances et du sentiment religieux, ainsi que de leurs manifestations culturelles, aussi bien dans le cadre de la cité (ou du pays, réel ou mythique) que dans la sphère du privé’ (p. 9). The twenty papers are divided into six sections: ‘Rôle structurant du divin ou du religieux dans la trame Romanesque’; ‘Fonction méta-littéraire du fait religieux ou du “personnel religieux” (divinités ou clergé)’; ‘Dieu/religion et caractérisation des personnages’; ‘Approches philosophiques ou spirituelles’; ‘Lectures allégoriques’; ‘Réappropriation des figures divines et évolution du sentiment religieux’. These six sections are further grouped in two larger parts, ‘Les potentialités littéraires de la religion (ou le fait religieux et l’écriture romanesque)' and ‘Le fonds religieux’. There is an index locorum and an index nominum at the end of the volume, but no combined bibliography.
The range of approaches to the subject is wide. There are papers which list all passages where gods appear or religious acts are mentioned (A. Billault on Achilles Tatius' use of religion as a structural element and driving force in the plot; H. Frangoulis on the ambiguity of the relationship between men and gods among the Ethiopians in Heliodorus) or statistically evaluate the ‘God factor’ in the ancient novels (K. Dowden on the attitude shown in Apuleius' Metamorphoses towards cult). Others resume old discussions highlighting religious context (G. Garbugino on the festival for the god of laughter in Apuleius' Metamorphoses; R. Brethes on problematic priest-figures whose roles oscillate between irreverence, parody and holiness, like Calasiris in Heliodorus). There are several papers on the role and function of Eros in the ancient novel (F. Létoublon/N. Boulic on the influence of poetical and philosophical traditions on the concepts of Eros in the ancient novels; M. Briand on the role of Eros/Dionysus in Longus' Daphnis and Chloe; C. Cusset on Eros as a literary figure also in Longus), which take up the old question of Eros being perceived as a god or a rather as an emotion (cf. pp. 118–20). Other papers transfer much discussed issues like the impact of religion on the genre's erotic ideology to lesser known texts (T. Whitmarsh on the tension between sexuality and Jewish religion in an anonymous text called Joseph and Aseneth). There are also papers which connect the religious angle with an intertextual approach (K. De Temmerman explores how the divine and the human spheres intermingle through the protagonist's association with gods and half-gods as part of their self-representation, e.g. Theagenes with Homer's hero Achilleus; M. Scarsi Garbugino compares the myth of Eros and Psyche with Hellenistic and Roman theatre as well as with Platon). The range of time covered in the volume is large: from S. Montanari's study on the re-writing of traditional mythology in Euhemerus' Sacred History (fourth/third century b.c.) to M. Lassithiotakis' paper about the edition and translation of the story of Imberios and Margarona in the sixteenth century or H. Tonnet's survey about Christian religion in the Greek novel of the nineteenth century.
There are a number of highly interesting papers that suggest new interpretations of the novels by focusing on gods (cf. J.-P. Guez on the conflict between Artemis and Aphrodite: he explains the asymmetrical beginning and end of Achilles Tatius' novel with the necessity of Leucippe's symbolic erasure from the text after she has been initiated into love – in analogy to the false virgins in the cave of Syrinx), on religious acts (B.-P. on the ecphrasis of religious celebrations as a central meeting point for the young lovers, e.g. Heliodorus 3.1–5) or on cults (J.R. Morgan on the cult of the river Nile in Heliodorus, which is arranged as a hierarchy of religious beliefs). Finally, the collection especially benefits from those papers which diacronically investigate the novels' perspective on god(s) or analyse the novel's change from polytheism to monotheism (C. Jouanno on the development of the pagan motif of Tyche in the Byzantine novels; F. Meunier on the use of polytheistic material in the Byzantine novels in the twelfth century; M.-A. Calvet-Sebasti on the protagonist's relation to God in the Greek Acts of Andrew).
