Articles

Emotional Conflict and Platonic Psychology in the Greek Novel

Authors

  • Ian Repath

Abstract

Internal emotional conflict is a staple of erotic fiction, and one way of conveying it available to an ancient author was Platonic psychology. Plato, an immensely popular author in the Second Sophistic, divided the soul into parts to account for conflicting desires: this idea and the terminology involved is repeatedly discussed by Plutarch and can be seen deployed in the works of the Greek novelists, especially Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, although its beginnings are present in Chariton. A ready and adaptable means of describing psychological turmoil and the feelings inspired by desire, the use of Platonic psychology shows the authors under consideration to be philosophically literate and writing for a readership which shared that knowledge and appreciated its meaning.

Ian Repath is Lecturer in Classics at Swansea University. He works and has published on Second Sophistic prose fiction, especially the Greek novel, names and allusions in fiction, the Roman novel, literary aspects of Plato, and ancient physiognomy. He is a founding member of KYKNOS.

Published

2007-12-31