Strange islands : an analysis of the genre and structures of the Lucianic periegesis
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2016
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Abstract
Most Western periegeses either directly or indirectly take their key elements and
structures from Lucian of Samosata’s Ἀληθὴ Ἱστορία, a second sophistic work approximately contemporary with the better-known Golden Ass of Apuleius; the work is popular enough to be far from unknown among the classically educated, but, perhaps due to its being in Greek, it is much less known to the general public in many periods (including our own). However, due to its influence on Renaissance authors, which was perhaps not coincidentally during the floruit of the verisimilous periegesis, Lucian’s influence on modern periegeses and the genre of science fiction is almost as great as that of Homer or Vergil or Ovid. In this thesis, I examine the thematic and structural relationship of the Ἀληθὴ Ἱστορία to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels... My focus is on the structure of islands, seas, and other geographic categories as elements of story structure; on the relationship between the traveler and the island and the familiar versus the other; and finally on truth vs. falsehood and the relationship between narrator, narrator-at-the-time-of-event, and author.