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reader. This is the riddle. The answer emerges in the battle, when the Blemmyes rush forward like madmen (all this is seen from the Persian point of view, without explanation), throw themselves to the ground and stab upwards with their swords into the horses’ unprotected bellies as they thunder over their heads (9.17-18), and then butcher the dismounted knights through the one vulnerable point in their armour, between the legs, as they lie helpless, too heavy to move. Meanwhile the Seres part ranks to reveal Hydaspes’ corps of elephants, the sight of which throws the cavalry into panic. Ethiopian archers pick off the survivors by shooting arrows through the eye-slits in their helmets. Unobtrusive clues to the stratagem were furnished in the description of the armour, where all the details which become important in the battle were unosten tatiously included. These examples present the riddle format over a medium-term narrative span. The pattern recurs with sufficient frequency for us to identify it as a characteristic feature of Heliodoros’ narrative technique. To reiterate, release of information is deliberately con trolled so as to entice the reader into identifying and answering, with varying degrees of certainty, questions posed by the narrative. The implied reader of the Aithiopika is compelled to be constantly engaged in interpretation and speculation, and must respond to the author’s games in order to actuate the text fully. Formalist critics earlier this century made a distinction between what they called histoire, that is the story as it ‘actually’ happened, complete and in chronological order, and ricit, that is, the way that the story is presented, the textual surface. To use their terms, Helio doros’ ricit consistently omits or postpones important aspects of the histoire, and the author communicates directly with the reader about the histoire through riddles, over the head of the narrator and his ricit. By this stage, it has probably become clear to anyone who knows the Aithiopika and the recent secondary literature on it that what I have been discussing is an exact counterpart in microcosm to the macrotextual structure of the whole work. This is where Heliodoros marks a spectacular advance over his predecessors in the romance form. At the end of the tradition, when Heliodoros was writing,10 two weaknesses of conventional romantic narrative must have become obvious. The first was its predictability: curi osity to know what happens next is the motor of reading any fiction, but with a stereotyped basic plot there can never be
DOI link for reader. This is the riddle. The answer emerges in the battle, when the Blemmyes rush forward like madmen (all this is seen from the Persian point of view, without explanation), throw themselves to the ground and stab upwards with their swords into the horses’ unprotected bellies as they thunder over their heads (9.17-18), and then butcher the dismounted knights through the one vulnerable point in their armour, between the legs, as they lie helpless, too heavy to move. Meanwhile the Seres part ranks to reveal Hydaspes’ corps of elephants, the sight of which throws the cavalry into panic. Ethiopian archers pick off the survivors by shooting arrows through the eye-slits in their helmets. Unobtrusive clues to the stratagem were furnished in the description of the armour, where all the details which become important in the battle were unosten tatiously included. These examples present the riddle format over a medium-term narrative span. The pattern recurs with sufficient frequency for us to identify it as a characteristic feature of Heliodoros’ narrative technique. To reiterate, release of information is deliberately con trolled so as to entice the reader into identifying and answering, with varying degrees of certainty, questions posed by the narrative. The implied reader of the Aithiopika is compelled to be constantly engaged in interpretation and speculation, and must respond to the author’s games in order to actuate the text fully. Formalist critics earlier this century made a distinction between what they called histoire, that is the story as it ‘actually’ happened, complete and in chronological order, and ricit, that is, the way that the story is presented, the textual surface. To use their terms, Helio doros’ ricit consistently omits or postpones important aspects of the histoire, and the author communicates directly with the reader about the histoire through riddles, over the head of the narrator and his ricit. By this stage, it has probably become clear to anyone who knows the Aithiopika and the recent secondary literature on it that what I have been discussing is an exact counterpart in microcosm to the macrotextual structure of the whole work. This is where Heliodoros marks a spectacular advance over his predecessors in the romance form. At the end of the tradition, when Heliodoros was writing,10 two weaknesses of conventional romantic narrative must have become obvious. The first was its predictability: curi osity to know what happens next is the motor of reading any fiction, but with a stereotyped basic plot there can never be
reader. This is the riddle. The answer emerges in the battle, when the Blemmyes rush forward like madmen (all this is seen from the Persian point of view, without explanation), throw themselves to the ground and stab upwards with their swords into the horses’ unprotected bellies as they thunder over their heads (9.17-18), and then butcher the dismounted knights through the one vulnerable point in their armour, between the legs, as they lie helpless, too heavy to move. Meanwhile the Seres part ranks to reveal Hydaspes’ corps of elephants, the sight of which throws the cavalry into panic. Ethiopian archers pick off the survivors by shooting arrows through the eye-slits in their helmets. Unobtrusive clues to the stratagem were furnished in the description of the armour, where all the details which become important in the battle were unosten tatiously included. These examples present the riddle format over a medium-term narrative span. The pattern recurs with sufficient frequency for us to identify it as a characteristic feature of Heliodoros’ narrative technique. To reiterate, release of information is deliberately con trolled so as to entice the reader into identifying and answering, with varying degrees of certainty, questions posed by the narrative. The implied reader of the Aithiopika is compelled to be constantly engaged in interpretation and speculation, and must respond to the author’s games in order to actuate the text fully. Formalist critics earlier this century made a distinction between what they called histoire, that is the story as it ‘actually’ happened, complete and in chronological order, and ricit, that is, the way that the story is presented, the textual surface. To use their terms, Helio doros’ ricit consistently omits or postpones important aspects of the histoire, and the author communicates directly with the reader about the histoire through riddles, over the head of the narrator and his ricit. By this stage, it has probably become clear to anyone who knows the Aithiopika and the recent secondary literature on it that what I have been discussing is an exact counterpart in microcosm to the macrotextual structure of the whole work. This is where Heliodoros marks a spectacular advance over his predecessors in the romance form. At the end of the tradition, when Heliodoros was writing,10 two weaknesses of conventional romantic narrative must have become obvious. The first was its predictability: curi osity to know what happens next is the motor of reading any fiction, but with a stereotyped basic plot there can never be
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ABSTRACT
J. R. MORGAN