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8 - Body and text

from Part II - The world of the novel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2008

Tim Whitmarsh
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

The bodies of the ancient novels are hard to ignore: beautiful, chaste bodies, god-like bodies, ugly bodies, dead bodies, fragmented bodies, penetrated bodies, animal bodies, bodies that are hard to tell apart from one another. The novels confront us with these forms insistently. Some of them look easy to interpret, as shining examples of chastity and virtue, qualities that manifest themselves inevitably in beauty. But many of them are enigmatic, unstable, hard to fathom. Here I want to emphasise two main issues in the challenge of reading the novels' bodies: first the way in which these texts both proclaim and problematise the status of physical appearance as a guarantor of inner identity; and second, the way in which the bodies they present us with are so often equivalent in form to the texts themselves, metaphors and mirrors for the very experience of reading. / Bodily integrity and elite identity / The elite society of the imperial period was preoccupied with the way in which social status left its marks on the surface of the human body. The way you dressed, the way you carried yourself, the way you exercised your body said a great deal about who you were. This was an age when gymnasium education, rhetorical prowess (with its obsessive attention to the bearing and physical training of the orator), and philosophically informed attention to bodily self-care were more prestigious then they ever had been, and when public violation and mutilation of the body in punishment were used more routinely and extravagantly than before to signify loss of social status or political influence.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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  • Body and text
  • Edited by Tim Whitmarsh, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel
  • Online publication: 28 June 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521865906.008
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  • Body and text
  • Edited by Tim Whitmarsh, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel
  • Online publication: 28 June 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521865906.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Body and text
  • Edited by Tim Whitmarsh, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel
  • Online publication: 28 June 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521865906.008
Available formats
×