Milesian tale
Encyclopedia
The Milesian tale originates in ancient Greek
and Roman
literature. According to most authorities, it is a short story
, fable
, or folktale
featuring love and adventure, usually being erotic
and titillating. M. C. Howatson, in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989), voices the traditional view that it is the source "of such medieval collections of tales as the Gesta Romanorum
, the Decameron
of Boccaccio
, and the Heptameron
of Marguerite of Navarre
."
But Gottskálk Jensson of the University of Copenhagen
, Denmark
, offers a dissenting view or corrective, arguing that the original Milesian tale was
This resulted in "a complicated narrative fabric: a travelogue carried by a main narrator with numerous subordinate tales carried by subordinate narrative voices." The best complete example of this would be Apuleius
' The Golden Ass
, a Roman novel written in the 2nd century of the Common Era
. Apuleius introduces his novel with the words "At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram" ("But let me join together different stories in that Milesian style") http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sjh/documents/prologueOUPvol.doc, which suggests that it isn't each story that is a Milesian tale but rather the entire joined-together collection. The idea of the Milesian tale also served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in Petronius
' Satyricon
.
In any case, the name Milesian tale originates from the Milesiaka of Aristides of Miletus (flourished 2nd century BCE), who was a writer of shameless and amusing tales with some salacious content and unexpected plot twists. Aristides set his tales in Miletus
, which had a reputation for a luxurious, easy-going lifestyle, akin to that of Sybaris
in Magna Graecia
; there is no reason to think that he was in any sense "of" Miletus himself.
Later, in the 1st century BCE, the serious-minded historian Lucius Cornelius Sisenna
for an intellectual relaxation translated Aristides into Latin under the title Milesiae fabulae (Milesian Fables), and the term "Milesian tale" gained currency in the ancient world. Milesian tales gained a reputation for ribaldry
: Ovid
, in Tristia, contrasts the boldness of Aristides and others with his own Ars Amatoria
, for which he was punished by exile. In the dialogue on the kinds of love, Erotes, Lucian of Samosata—if in fact he was the author—praised Aristides in passing, saying that after a day of listening to erotic stories he felt like Aristides, "that enchanting spinner of bawdy yarns." This suggests that the lost Milesiaka had for its framing device Aristides himself, retelling what he had been hearing of the goings-on at Miletus.
Plutarch
, in his Life of Crassus, tells us that after the defeat of Carrhae
in 53 BCE, some Milesian fables were found in the baggage of the Parthians' Roman prisoners.
Though the idea of the Milesian tale served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in Petronius
' Satyricon
and The Golden Ass
of Lucius Apuleius (2nd century CE), neither Aristides' Greek
text nor the Latin translation survived the centuries of literate disapproval of such disgraceful secular hijinks, written with verve and panache, essential elements of the style. The lengthiest survivor from this literature is the tale of Cupid and Psyche
, found in Apuleius, which Sir Richard Burton observed, "makes us deeply regret the disappearance of the others."
Aristidean saucy and disreputable heroes and spicy, fast-paced anecdote resurfaced in the medieval fabliau
x. Chaucer's The Miller's Tale is in Aristides' tradition, as are some of the saltier tales in Boccaccio
's Decameron
or the Heptameron
of Margaret of Angoulême.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
literature. According to most authorities, it is a short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
, fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
, or folktale
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
featuring love and adventure, usually being erotic
Eroticism
Eroticism is generally understood to refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love...
and titillating. M. C. Howatson, in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989), voices the traditional view that it is the source "of such medieval collections of tales as the Gesta Romanorum
Gesta Romanorum
Gesta Romanorum, a Latin collection of anecdotes and tales, was probably compiled about the end of the 13th century or the beginning of the 14th...
, the Decameron
The Decameron
The Decameron, also called Prince Galehaut is a 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people....
of Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
, and the Heptameron
Heptameron
The Heptameron is a collection of 72 short stories written in French by Marguerite of Navarre, published in 1558. It has the form of a frame narrative and was inspired by The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio...
of Marguerite of Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre
Marguerite de Navarre , also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre...
."
But Gottskálk Jensson of the University of Copenhagen
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, offers a dissenting view or corrective, arguing that the original Milesian tale was
- a type of first-person novelNovelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, a travelogueTravel literatureTravel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
told from memory by a narratorNarratorA narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
who every now and then would relate how he encountered other charactersFictional characterA character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
who told him stories which he would then incorporate into the main tale through the rhetoricRhetoricRhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
al technique of narrative impersonation. http://www.apaclassics.org/AnnualMeeting/98mtg/abstracts/Jensson.html
This resulted in "a complicated narrative fabric: a travelogue carried by a main narrator with numerous subordinate tales carried by subordinate narrative voices." The best complete example of this would be Apuleius
Apuleius
Apuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
' The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
, a Roman novel written in the 2nd century of the Common Era
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
. Apuleius introduces his novel with the words "At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram" ("But let me join together different stories in that Milesian style") http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sjh/documents/prologueOUPvol.doc, which suggests that it isn't each story that is a Milesian tale but rather the entire joined-together collection. The idea of the Milesian tale also served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in Petronius
Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
' Satyricon
Satyricon
Satyricon is a Latin work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as a certain Titus Petronius...
.
In any case, the name Milesian tale originates from the Milesiaka of Aristides of Miletus (flourished 2nd century BCE), who was a writer of shameless and amusing tales with some salacious content and unexpected plot twists. Aristides set his tales in Miletus
Miletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
, which had a reputation for a luxurious, easy-going lifestyle, akin to that of Sybaris
Sybaris
Sybaris was an ancient city in Magna Graecia on the western shore of the Gulf of Taranto. The wealth of the city during the 6th century BC was so great that the Sybarites became synonymous with pleasure and luxury...
in Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia
Magna Græcia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Crotone, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north...
; there is no reason to think that he was in any sense "of" Miletus himself.
Later, in the 1st century BCE, the serious-minded historian Lucius Cornelius Sisenna
Lucius Cornelius Sisenna
Lucius Cornelius Sisenna was a Roman soldier, historian, and annalist. He was killed in action during Pompey's campaign against pirates after the Third Mithridatic War. Sisenna had been commander of the forces on the coast of Greece....
for an intellectual relaxation translated Aristides into Latin under the title Milesiae fabulae (Milesian Fables), and the term "Milesian tale" gained currency in the ancient world. Milesian tales gained a reputation for ribaldry
Ribaldry
Ribaldry is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to gross indecency. It is also referred to as "bawdiness", "gaminess" or "bawdry"....
: Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, in Tristia, contrasts the boldness of Aristides and others with his own Ars Amatoria
Ars Amatoria
The Ars amatoria is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Background:After...
, for which he was punished by exile. In the dialogue on the kinds of love, Erotes, Lucian of Samosata—if in fact he was the author—praised Aristides in passing, saying that after a day of listening to erotic stories he felt like Aristides, "that enchanting spinner of bawdy yarns." This suggests that the lost Milesiaka had for its framing device Aristides himself, retelling what he had been hearing of the goings-on at Miletus.
Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
, in his Life of Crassus, tells us that after the defeat of Carrhae
Battle of Carrhae
The Battle of Carrhae, fought in 53 BC near the town of Carrhae, was a major battle between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic. The Parthian Spahbod Surena decisively defeated a Roman invasion force led by Marcus Licinius Crassus...
in 53 BCE, some Milesian fables were found in the baggage of the Parthians' Roman prisoners.
Though the idea of the Milesian tale served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in Petronius
Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
' Satyricon
Satyricon
Satyricon is a Latin work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as a certain Titus Petronius...
and The Golden Ass
The Golden Ass
The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass , is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety....
of Lucius Apuleius (2nd century CE), neither Aristides' Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
text nor the Latin translation survived the centuries of literate disapproval of such disgraceful secular hijinks, written with verve and panache, essential elements of the style. The lengthiest survivor from this literature is the tale of Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche , is a legend that first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the 2nd century CE. Apuleius likely used an earlier tale as the basis for his story, modifying it to suit the thematic needs of his novel.It has...
, found in Apuleius, which Sir Richard Burton observed, "makes us deeply regret the disappearance of the others."
Aristidean saucy and disreputable heroes and spicy, fast-paced anecdote resurfaced in the medieval fabliau
Fabliau
A fabliau is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by an excessiveness of sexual and scatological obscenity. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer...
x. Chaucer's The Miller's Tale is in Aristides' tradition, as are some of the saltier tales in Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
's Decameron
The Decameron
The Decameron, also called Prince Galehaut is a 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people....
or the Heptameron
Heptameron
The Heptameron is a collection of 72 short stories written in French by Marguerite of Navarre, published in 1558. It has the form of a frame narrative and was inspired by The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio...
of Margaret of Angoulême.