Table of Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- PART ONE: THE ANCIENT NOVEL IN CONTEXT -- Alexander the Great in the Arabic Tradition -- 'The Last Days of Alexander' in an Arabic Popular Romance of Al-Iskandar -- Lucius and Aesop Gain a Voice: Apul. Met. 11.1-2 and Vita Aesopi 7 -- The Grand Vizier, the Prophet, and the Satirist. Transformations of the Oriental Ahiqar Romance in Ancient Prose Fiction -- Living Portraits and Sculpted Bodies in Chariton's Theater of Romance -- Spectator and Spectacle in Apuleius -- Plato's Dream: Philosophy and Fiction in the Theaetetus -- Fiction as a Discourse of Philosophy in Lucian's Verae Historiae -- The Representation of Violence in the Greek Novels and Martyr Accounts -- Three Death Scenes in Apollonius of Tyre -- PART TWO: THE ANCIENT NOVEL IN FOCUS -- Swordplay - Wordplay: Phraseology of Fiction in Apuleius' Metamorphoses -- Nymphs, Neighbours and Narrators: a Narratological Approach to Longus -- Reading for Pleasure: Narrative, Irony, and Eroticism in Achilles Tatius -- The Winged Ass. Intertextuality and Narration in Apuleius' Metamorphoses -- Tlepolemus the Spectral Spouse -- Epic Extremities: The Openings and Closures of Books in Apuleius' Metamorphoses -- In mediis rebus: Beginning Again in the Middle of the Ancient Novel -- La lettre dans le roman grec ou les liaisons dangereuses -- The Role of Inscriptions in Greco-Roman Novels -- Strategies of Authentication in Ancient Popular Literature -- PART THREE: BEYOND THE ANCIENT NOVEL -- Archaic Iambos and Greek Novel: A Possible Connection -- Resistant (and enabling) Reading: Petronius' Satyricon and Latin Love Elegy -- La mise en scène déclamatoire chez les romanciers latins -- Der byzantinische Roman des 12. Jahrhunderts als Spiegel des zeitgenössischen Literaturbetriebs.

Static Imitation or Creative Transformation? Achilles Tatius in Hysmine & Hysminias -- The 'Entführung aus dem Serail'-motif in the Byzantine (vernacular) Romances -- Staging the Fringe Before Shakespeare: Hans Sachs and the Ancient Novel -- Heliodor, Mademoiselle de Scudéry und Umberto Eco: Lektüren des Liebesromans in L'isola del giorno prima -- From Petronius to Petrolio: Satyricon as a Model-Experimental Novel -- Myths of Person and Place: the Search for a Model for the Ancient Greek Novel -- Notes on contributors -- Abbreviations -- General bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Z.