Reading Fiction with Lucian

"This book offers a captivating new interpretation of Lucian as a fictional theorist and writer to stand alongside the novelists of the day, bringing to bear on his works a whole new set of reading strategies. It argues that the aesthetic and cultural issues Lucian faced, in a world of mimesis and replication, were akin to those found in postmodern contexts: the ubiquity of the fake, the erasure of origins, the focus on the freakish and weird at the expense of the traditional. In addition to exploring the texture of Lucian's own writing, Dr Ni' Mheallaigh uses Lucian as a focal point through which to examine other fictional texts of the period, including Antonius Diogenes' The Incredible Things Beyond Thule, Dictys' Journal of the Trojan War and Ptolemy Chennus' Novel History, and reveals the importance of fiction's engagement with its contemporary culture of writing, entertainment and wonder"-- "This book invites you to read the postclassical literary culture of the imperial period through Lucian as through a prism, for much of what I have to say about Lucian here has a direct bearing on what other writers of this period are doing too, and parallels can be found both then and in our own postmodern period as well. The book also invites you to read with imagination, and with pleasure. My exploration of parallels is eclectic and meant to be suggestive, not comprehensive"--