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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Fabric of the Self in Heliodorus' Aethiopica

The Fabric of the Self in Heliodorus' Aethiopica

Capettini, Emilio

Hardcover

Series: Ancient Narrative Supplements

Literary CriticismGeneral Racism & Ethnic Studies

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 9493194744
ISBN13: 9789493194748
Publisher: Barkhuis
Pages: 370
Language: English
Heliodorus' Aethiopica - a novel whose complex plot is set in motion by the birth of a pale-skinned baby to dark-skinned parents as a result of a remarkable instance of maternal impression - raises profound questions about the dynamics whereby individual identities are shaped and reshaped, prompting its readers to attend not only to the competing roles of nature and nurture in constituting a person, but also to the ways in which individuals, as they position themselves in the world, form or revise their mental images of themselves. Focusing precisely on these issues and combining insights from literary studies, classics, anthropology, and queer theory, this book offers a new understanding of the depiction of personal identity in the Aethiopica in two key ways. On the one hand, it contends that ancestry and ethnic belonging retain a much more important role in the anthropology subtending the novel than recent scholars have acknowledged. On the other, it argues that Heliodorus, albeit immersed in a cultural milieu in which behavior was judged with reference to objective ethical norms and in which participation in interpersonal relations was considered central to the self, did nonetheless address questions of individuality, autonomy, and subjectivity, presenting, in fact, interdependence and autonomy as entirely compatible. Adopting a textile metaphor that Charicleia, the female protagonist, uses to describe her story in a striking metanarrative passage, this book suggests that the selves of the two protagonists are presented as complex and gradually developing fabrics, and that the intersection of vertical and horizontal threads characteristic of ancient weaving aptly mirrors the combination, in the protagonists' identities, of traits flowing down the genealogical axis with qualities that emerge in them as they establish new affective bonds and experience the world's tangled mesh of human and nonhuman forces. It is because of this complex depiction of the protagonists' selves that the Aethiopica, this book argues, is such a bold and brilliant text, offering not only a sophisticated narrative but also a fascinating exploration of the intricacies of personal identity that complicates and enriches our understanding of selfhood in the imperial era and in late antiquity.

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