Criminal elements: the evolution of the outlaw in the ancient novel
By Katherine Panagakos
PhD Dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004
Abstract: In the first to fourth centuries A.D., a literary genre developed unlike any the Graeco-Roman world had seen. While essentially an amalgam of nearly all earlier types of literature, the ancient grammarians and commentators found the ancient novels difficult to classify. These texts employed tragic and comedic elements, as well as historiographical, epic, and erotic components. In addition to the difficulties the ancients had in classifying such a unique creation, these fictional works continue to be problematic in the modern world. Issues related to the origins of the novel are debated regularly, as well as problems pertaining to the dating, chronology, authorship, and provenance of many of these texts. Although these works have received much scholarly attention in the last forty years, there has been no thorough study of the narratological function of outlaws (ubiquitous figures throughout the novels).
In this dissertation, I focus my examination on the
