Achilles Tatius
Outline of the whole work at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11rmnyWDzCEN2surASr83wxULyQeh06K6y8eQQQ84Xrc/edit?usp=sharing Some closing thoughts on Achilles Tatius: Quite a mix of genres: paradoxography, geography, ecphrasis, legal speech/rhetoric, light philosophy. At times the narrative is clearly being constructed in order to provide an excuse for some setpiece, e.g. the description of the phoenix that ends book 3. Book placement: as that phoenix anecdote exemplifies, books often end in a high point, e.g. book 5 ends in the climactic lovemaking between Kleitophon and Melite. Women are underdeveloped in the text: we rarely see things from their perspective, and even when we do (e.g. Leucippe’s narration at the end of the work or Melite’s pleas in book 5), their motivations are thin. Leucippe is particularly bad – she never really arises above the level of passive, beautiful love interest. The work plays with the cliches of love (perhaps a motivating force for the genre as a whole)...