Novel Saints: Ancient Fiction and Hagiography Research Centre
The novel is currently the most popular literary genre worldwide. Yet its early history has hardly been written. The research team of Novel Saints aims to enhance our understanding of this history (both conceptually and cross-culturally) by studying the novel in antiquity (both Latin and Greek) as well as its persistences in late antique and early medieval narrative traditions. This period has so far constituted a blind spot on the radar of scholars working on the history of the novel, much to the detriment of the study of narrative in subsequent periods, as the medieval era has been regarded as an ‘empty’ interim period between the late antique representatives of the genre (ca. 3rd-4th cent.) and the re-emergence of the novel in 11th-12th-century Byzantium and 11th-century Persia. Methodologically, the team combines insights from both ancient and modern rhetorical and literary theories.
Principal Investigator: Prof. Koen De Temmerman
News
- 28-04-2023: Blog: History on Repeat: Tradition, Innovation and the Ancient World Winter School
- 20-01-2023: Blog: All Roads Lead to Novels: A brief account from the voices of two ICAN VI travellers
- 13-04-2022: Blog: Teaching Near Eastern rhetoric: the nostos of a BA Class and its awkward teacher
- 25-02-2022: Blog: Shame – and all the bad it can do, between Homer and now
- 21-12-2021: Blog: On the reality and illusion of performance – from Broadway to Byzantium
- 02-11-2021: Blog: Gods of Montage: Sergei Eisenstein and Xenophon of Ephesos
Financial support
Our research team is generously supported by:
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This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under both the European Union’s Seventh framework programme (Starting Grant agreement No. 337344 Novel Saints) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Consolidator Grant agreement No. 819459 Novel Echoes).