Dreams and suicides : the Greek novel from antiquity to the Byzantine Empire / Suzanne MacAlister

London ; New York : Routledge, 1996. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dust-wrapper. Particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Physical description; ix, 235 pages ; 23 cm. Notes; Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-224) and indexes. Contents; 1. A Response to Uncertainty. Russian roulette. A conjunction of hope, despair and revelation. A conjunction of love, despair and death -- 2. Cultural Meanings Subjected to Reflection. Dignity and despair. 'Since there exists a certain measure of doubt ... ' -- 3. The Novel, The Dream and 'Suicide' in the Interim Period. Brides and grooms of death. Revelatory passages. To Leukippe and Kleitophon: a son -- 4. The Byzantine Revival. The act as object of variance. The meaning of the act reformulated. The act as illusion -- 5. The Revival in Context. Rhetoric and performance. Ideological tensions. The alien speech of Aristotle. The alien speech of the novel -- Appendix. Synopses of novels highlighting dreams and suicides. Chariton's Chaireas and Kallirhoe. Xenophon of Ephesos' Ephesiaka. Achilles Tatius' Leukippe and Kleitophon. Longus' Daphnis and Chloe. Heliodoros' Aithiopika. Makrembolites' Hsymine and Hysminias. Prodromos' Rhodanthe and Dosikles. Subjects; Andrae, A. Greek fiction History and criticism. Byzantine fiction History and criticism. Literature and society Greece.