The study of the reception of the ancient novel and of its literary and
cultural heritage is one of the most appealing issues in the story of
this literary genre. In no other genre has the vitality of classical
tradition manifested itself in such a lasting and versatile manner as in
the novel. However, this unifying, centripetal quality also worked in an
opposite direction, spreading to and contaminating future literatures.
Over the centuries, from Antiquity to the present time there have been
many authors who drew inspiration from the Greek and Roman novels or
used them as models, from Cervantes to Shakespeare, Sydney or Racine,
not to mention the profound influence these texts exercised on, for
instance, sixteenth-to eighteenth-century Italian, Portuguese and
Spanish literature. Volume I is divided into sections that follow a
chronological order, while Volume II deals with the reception of the
ancient novel in literature and art. The first volume brings together an
international group of scholars whose main aim is to analyse the
survival of the ancient novel in the ancient world and in the Middle
Ages, in the Renaissance, in the 17th and 18th centuries, and in the
modern era. The contributors to the second volume have undertaken the
task of discussing the survival of the ancient novel in the visual arts,
in literature and in the performative arts. The papers assembled in
these two volumes on reception are at the forefront of scholarship in
the field and will stimulate scholarly research on the ancient novel and
its influence over the centuries up to modern times, thus enriching not
only Classics but also modern languages and literatures, cultural
history, literary theory and comparative literature.