ABSTRACT
Like Godzich and Kittay, Eco is thinking of texts as "processive threadings" rather than as static objects brought forth whole, like Athena from the head of Zeus. The experience of the linear unfolding of the story need not at every point be qualitatively different for the reader and the author, as if that unfolding were staged by an author who has absolute control over its every aspect. "The author." writes P. Macherey. "is the first reader of his own work" (Macherey 1978.9). Moreover. Bartsch's thesis that Achilles Tatius has carefully constructed an elaborate hermeneutic game that thematizes reading and interpretation makes the novel into a sophisticated diversion only incidentally concerned with exploring issues of gender and desire. But it seems to me that Achilles Tatius has embarked on a more radically experimental narrative adventure in which hS deploys a whole range of elements from a variety of genres that take up issues of eros. without having a monolithic strategy from beginning to end. The character of the descrip tive "digressions" that occur throughout the novel may be rooted in a more tentative and vaguely defined impulse to try out new ideas. Such a view of the novel's narrative agenda resonates with Bakhtin's characterization of novelistic discourse as "unfinal" and "open-ended," part of the "centrifugal forces of language."14 It also takes account of the fact that any complex text-and Leucippe and Clitophon is not simple in any way-will inevita bly exceed the conscious intentions of its author. As we shall see, this novel cries out for attention to manifestations of unconscious intentions.
