The project has constructed an online database that charts for the first time all types of intertextual references and allusions to ancient novels both in hagiography and in secular narrative from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (4th-12th cent.) and (2) all testimonia of ancient novels in the same period (from casual, short references in epigrams and rhetorical treatises to full-fledged treatises on specific novels).
The project has considerably broadened the scope of reception studies of ancient novels by identifying and discussing several hitherto unknown or disregarded references to ancient novels in later texts. It has thus shown that the reception of the ancient novel in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages up to the 12th century is significantly more extensive than previously believed. Our work has identified specific genres, authors, eras and regions of particular interest and highlighted and documented the presence and significance of ancient novels in contexts where they have traditionally been either insufficiently explored or completely overlooked altogether. We have thus demonstrated the circulation and sustained popularity of ancient novels throughout the millennium following their composition, well before their 12th-century revival.
The project has unearthed new material and filled lacunae in scholarship through a number of in-depth studies ranging from Byzantine literary criticism and florilegia to Old French romance, Syriac rhetorical theory, hagiography in western and eastern traditions, and epistolography. It combined manuscript research, intertextuality, close reading, both ancient and modern literary criticism and rhetorical studies both to provide new interpretations of late antique and medieval narrative texts that are impacted by ancient novels, and to identify modes of circulation and routes of transmission of ancient Greek novels into the Middle Ages. This had led to new insights into where and how ancient novels were read and how concepts of fiction shaped narrative in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
In addition, the project placed the study of the reception of the ancient novel on a methodologically improved footing and provided new methodological paradigms for exploring the reception of novelistic fiction in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Finally, the project has produced several critical text editions of previously unpublished narrative texts.
The project members have disseminated their findings to academic audiences worldwide in a series of conference papers and academic publications (monographs, edited volumes, journal articles, book chapters and an online database). The dissemination to non-academic audiences has taken several forms: contributions to (written) media, popularizing lectures, the writing and distribution of blog posts, engagement in summer courses for university students, and the organization of workshops at secondary schools.
