Lucian: Three Menippean Fantasies

The writings of Menippus, the third-century BCE Greek Cynic movement provocateur, are known through Lucian's reanimations. This book includes Joel Relihans English translations of Lucian's three reanimations, which tell a story of Lucian's evolving understanding of the philosophical and literary potential of Menippus' works. It also considers how Lucian's imitations and innovations adumbrate, illuminate, and complicate the history of Menippean satire.

Format: Hardback
Length: 184 pages
Publication date: 06 October 2021
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc

Menippus, the Greek Cynic movement's provocateur from the third century BCE, left behind only a few fragments of his writings. Lucian, a Greek satirist who lived and worked four hundred years later, is how the Western literary tradition knows him.

This book includes Joel Relihans lively English translations of Lucian's three reanimations of Menippus: fantastic narratives and comic dialogues set in heaven and hell:

1. Menippus; or, The Consultation of the Corpses
2. Icaromenippus; or, A Man above the Clouds
3. The Colloquies of the Corpses (Dialogues of the Dead)

For the first time in over fifty years, these works are assembled in a unified format to tell a particular story: Lucian's evolving understanding of the philosophical and literary potential of the person, productions, and purposes of Menippus.

Not only is it time to give Lucian's Menippus a fresh look and a thorough reevaluation, but also to consider how Lucian's imitations and innovations adumbrate, illuminate, and complicate the history of that enigmatic genre, Menippean satire.

Weight: 338g
Dimension: 230 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781647920265