How is the history of antiquity told, and what is the role of narrativity in transforming the image of antiquity? This volume addresses the highly charged intersection between experience, narrative, and history that may be apprehended when we consider the great diversity of narrative practices in literature, the visual arts, and historiography. In this study, narrativity is conceptualized as a particular way of inventing meaning by creating coherency through retrospective reorganization. Particularly in relation to antiquity, narratives may be used to establish historical continuity by filling in caesuras and by creating transitions and connections. Individual chapters explore transformations in the imagery, content, stories, and narrative modes of antiquity as they were appropriated in medieval and early modern chronicles, images, and epics. They investigate the forms, modes, and functions of such appropriation and examine the conditions that help explain the particular narrative transformations occurring in the different genres and media that are examined.

Anna Heinze, Albert Schirrmeister und Julia Weitbrecht, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.