Overview
Novel Saints aims to enhance our understanding of the history of the novel (both conceptually and cross-culturally) by studying it in antiquity (both Latin and Greek) as well as its persistence in late antique and early medieval narrative traditions. This period has so far constituted a blind spot on the radar of scholars working on the history of the novel, much to the detriment of the study of narrative in subsequent periods, as the medieval era has been regarded as an ‘empty’ interim period between the late antique representatives of the genre (ca. 3rd-4th cent.) and the re-emergence of the novel in 11th-12th-century Byzantium and 11th-century Persia. As part of its activities, Novel Saints is building a reference collection with all types of novelistic influence in secular narrative from the 4th to the 12th century.
