A Flowery Meadow and a Hidden Metalepsis in Achilles Tatius

Abstract

It is commonly known that Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon is set apart from the other ancient Greek novels by its narrative technique. 1 It is the only extant Greek novel in which the story is narrated by the protagonist himself. 2 The novel's prologue is set in Sidon, where an anonymous narrator beholds a painting of Europa's abduction by Zeus and gives a lengthy description of it (1.1.2-13). The painting is simultaneously viewed by a young man who turns out to be Clitophon, the hero of the novel, and the two men begin a conversation about the power of eros. Clitophon is invited by the primary narrator to tell about his own experiences with eros. Once Clitophon has started his narration (1.3.1), the primary narrator never intervenes, and the frame narrative in Sidon is apparently never resumed. 3 This note contributes to the wider issue of narrative structure in Achilles Tatius. I argue that Clitophon's portrayal of Leucippe at the end of the first book (1.19) contains a deliberate reference to the frame narrative and thus constitutes an example of the narratological device of metalepsis, defined by G. Genette as 'a deliberate transgression of the threshold of embedding'. 4 Metalepsis, then, is the slippage between different levels of narration, or, in M. Fludernik's words, 'the move of existants or actants from any hierarchically ordered level into one above or below'. 5 In SHORTER NOTES 667 8 We are very grateful to Rhiannon Ash, Mikolaj Szymanski, and CQ's referee for suggesting various improvements. 1 The novel is usually dated in the early second half of the second century A.D. See OCD 3 s.v. Achilles Tatius and E. Bowie, 'The chronology of the earlier Greek novels since B.E. Perry: revisions and precisions', Ancient Narrative 2 (2002), 47-63, at 60-1, who proposes A.D. 164 as a terminus ante quem. 2 On the uniqueness of this homodiegetic narration in the novelistic corpus, see, among others,