Preface
List of Abbreviations
1 Introduction
Part One: Themes of Fantasy
2 Otherworldly Conversations in Antiquity
3 Talking Animals, Monstrous Creatures
4 Fantastic Voyages, Other Communities
5 Dreams, Apparitions, Horror
6 Some Fantastic Aspects of Myth
7 The Ultimate Myth: Metamorphosis
8 Bizarre Banquets, Topsy-Turvy Tables
9 Planting the Phallus: Sexual Fantasy
Part Two: Divergent Imaginations
10 Verse Fantasy into Prose
11 Inventing the Past in Homer and Philostratus
Part Three: Fantastic Texts
12 Old Comedy and Lucian
13 Getting into Heaven: Icaromenippus and Apocolocyntosis
14 The Summation of Fantasy: Lucian’s True Histories
Part Four: Consumers of Fantasy
15 Narrators and Audiences for Fantasy
16 Some Approaches, Ancient and Modern
17 Conclusions
Appendix: Some Fantastic Nonsense
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Graham Anderson is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Kent, UK. He has written extensively on ancient fiction and fantasy, including Fairytale in the Ancient World (Routledge, 2000) and Greek and Roman Folklore (2006). He has just completed an anthology of ancient fairy tales for Routledge.
"Anderson has opened a door through which future scholars of the fantastic in ancient literature can walk and wander, providing a guide to how and where to begin looking... There have been, and continue to be, those who argue that while there are certainly, and undoubtedly, fantastic elements in ancient tales, "fantasy" as a genre does not exist before the nineteenth century, a thesis Anderson has set out through a significant body of work spanning the first twenty years of this new millennium to disprove. Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature offers an absorbing, charming, and thought-provoking new chapter in these efforts." - Bryn Mawr Classical Review
