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Narcissus has been with us all along: Ancient stories as narcissistic narratives

Authors
  • Dinkler, Michal Beth
Type
Published Article
Journal
Frontiers of Narrative Studies
Publisher
De Gruyter
Publication Date
Aug 08, 2017
Volume
3
Issue
1
Pages
33–49
Identifiers
DOI: 10.1515/fns-2017-0003
Source
De Gruyter
Keywords
License
Yellow

Abstract

Taking her cue from Freud’s insistence that narcissism is the “universal original condition” of humanity, Linda Hutcheon argues in her book Narcissistic narrative: The metafictional paradox that narcissism is “the original condition of the novel as a genre” (1984: 8). Such “metafictional” or “self-reflexive” literature is regularly dated to the seventeenth century. However, this essay argues that narrative narcissism has been with us since ancient times, not just since the rise of post/modern novelistic discourse. Narratives from various ages and places, across diverse corpora, draw attention to their own textuality, even if they do so to differing degrees and in different ways. To relegate all considerations of narrative narcissism to overt examples of post/modern “metafiction” is a categorical mistake. Making my case with reference to a wide range of ancient narratives, I argue that narrative narcissism can be a useful, nuanced analytic lens through which to read ancient literature, and that ancient examples of narcissism can nuance our understanding of this narratological concept.

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