FNS 2017; 3(1): 33–49

Michal Beth Dinkler*

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

https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2017-0003

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 catego-
rical mistake. Making my case with reference to a wide range of ancient narra-
tives, 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.

Keywords: ancient narrative, reflexivity, Echo and Narcissus, narrative narcis-

sism, narratology

1 Introduction
“My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed.”

So begins the epic poem in which we find the most famous version of the myth of
Narcissus and Echo – Ovid’s Metamorphoses (3: 339–351). This particular mythic
account has itself been read as an account of literary “forms transformed,” its
reflecting pool as a surface on which to reflect about the roles of writers and
readers, texts and reality. Linda Hutcheon defines “narcissistic narrative” as
“fiction that includes within itself a commentary on its own narrative and/or
linguistic identity” (Hutcheon 1984: 1). Taking her cue from Freud’s insistence

*Corresponding author: Michal Beth Dinkler, Yale Divinity School, 409 Prospect Street,
New Haven, CT 06511, E-Mail: [email protected]
34 Michal Beth Dinkler

that narcissism is the “universal original condition” of humanity, Hutcheon

argues in Narcissistic Narrative that narcissism is “the original condition of the
novel as a genre” (Hutcheon 1984: 8).
My aim in this study is twofold: first, I wish to broaden Hutcheon’s already
sweeping claim. Narcissism is not tied to the genre of the novel (modern or
postmodern). Narcissism is, in fact, the original condition of narrative.1 As the
myth of Narcissus and Echo itself attests, ancient narratives, too, can be read as
metafictional reflections on their own narrative nature. In contrast to the common
view that narrative narcissism belongs to modernity, narratives from various
ages, across diverse corpora, draw attention to their own textuality, even if they
do so to differing degrees and in various ways. Second, I argue that we ought to
consider narrative narcissism on a continuum, a spectrum of degrees. Certain
narrative moments reverberate as reflexive – certain moments echo the myth of
Narcissus – more deeply, more sonorously than others; this is because, like Ovid’s
Echo, their expression depends on contingencies that elude control.
The first section below briefly describes the common view that “narcissistic,”
or “self-reflexive” literature arose with the advent of the modern novel and
explores why this perception continues to hold sway. My proposal, developed in
the second section of the essay, is this: we ought to bring Echo back into our
allegorical employments of Narcissus in narratology. Narcissus is not the only
character in the Ovidian myth, Echo plays an important role, as well – one that
rewards theoretical reflection. Yet, she has dropped out of critical discourse on
narrative. Like Juno, we (ironically, albeit unintentionally) silence Echo in our
efforts to theorize these kinds of narrative.2 Watching only for examples of
narrative narcissism in contemporary literature means we will be deaf from the
start to the Other – the Echo that precedes repetition – reverberating into our day
from long before the modern era.
Most basically, listening again for Echo means giving full attention to exam-
ples of narrative narcissism from antiquity. The latter section of the essay works
toward this end by providing evidence of different kinds of literary narcissism
from a wide range of ancient narratives. Throughout, I insist that despite its critical
relegation to discussions of post/modern novelistic discourse, narrative narcis-
sism can be a useful and nuanced analytic lens through which to read ancient

1 The concept of narrative narcissism used here ought to be distinguished from psychoanalytic
treatments of narcissism (as clinical/medical disorder) in literature such as, e.g., Berman (1990);
 

Layton and Schapiro (1986); and Bouson (1989).

2 For an insightful reading of Ovid’s myth in terms of the complicated ethical question of relating
to the Other, see Nouvet (1991).
 Narcissus has been with us 35

narratives. Reflexive narratives are not only like Narcissus, after all. Narcissistic
narratives are like Echo (echoistic?), as well.

2 Narcissistic narratives: Origins

Other terms used to refer to “narcissistic narratives” include self-reference, self-
figuration, narrative introversion, self-consciousness, literary mirroring, breaking
the frame, narratorial obtrusiveness, metanarrative, and metafiction. There are
subtle differences in the ways individual critics use these specific terms, of course,
but for our purposes, it is enough to recognize that they all refer to a particular
kind of narrational technique, broadly construed – that is, meta-level references
to the narrativity of narrative, or to the textuality of texts. What we are here calling
“narcissistic narrative” could just as easily be called “narrative reflexivity,” which
as the etymology of reflexivity suggests – from the Latin reflexivus, re (‘again’) +
flectere (‘to bend’) – is a turning or bending back on oneself. Jeffrey Williams thus
defines narrative reflexivity as those moments “when narrative refers to itself, to
its own medium, mode, and process, rather than simply to other (non-linguistic)
‘events,’ that we normally assume constitute a narrative” (Williams 1998: 7). Or
narcissistic narrative could be described using Robert Alter’s definition of what he
calls a “self-conscious novel” – that is, one “that systematically flaunts its own
condition of artifice and that by so doing probes into the problematic relationship
between real-seeming artifice and reality” (Alter 1975: x).
For many theorists, narrative narcissism is a category that belongs uniquely to
contemporary or modern literature. The edited volume from 2005, Self-reflexivity
in Literature, for example, introduces texts that exhibit “metafictional awareness
of [their] own constructedness and textuality” by asserting that “self-reflexivity is
both an expression of and a basic requirement of modern rationality and self-
consciousness” (Huber et al. 2005: 8, emphasis mine). Quite often, scholars trace
narcissistic narratives’ originary moment to Cervantes’ seventeenth-century pub-
lication of Don Quixote.3
I want to insist, however, with Wallace Martin, that narrative narcissism is
“as old as narrative itself” (Martin 1986: 181). To be fair, authors concerned with
metafictional elements of literature do at times recognize ancient roots of the
phenomena, though they tend to do so only parenthetically. Alter, for example,

3 E.g., Heine (1920 [1893]): 313; Alter (1975: 23); Hutcheon (1984: 8). Originally published in 1605
(Volume I) and 1615 (Volume II), Don Quixote was widely translated and disseminated, well-
received from the start.
36 Michal Beth Dinkler

refers briefly to moments of self-consciousness in the Odyssey and Euripides’

parodies of Greek tragedy (Alter 1975: 23), while Robert Stam asserts: “The stories-
within-stories of the comic epic Don Quixote [...] find their epic antecedents in the
heroic songs which dot the larger heroic song which is The Odyssey. The carnival-
esque anti-illusionism of a Rabelais traces back to the Menippean satire of Lucian,
Petronius, and Apuleius” (Stam 1992: 1). Most critics today would also likely agree
with Hutcheon that “[a]rt has always been ‘illusion,’ and as one might surmise, it
has often, if not always, been self-consciously aware of that ontological status.
This formal narcissism is a broad cultural phenomenon, not limited by art form or
even by period” (Hutcheon 1984: 17). Nevertheless, the overwhelming focus on
the “modern novel” in critical discourse about narrative narcissism continues to
tie narrative self-consciousness to contemporary texts, to the exclusion of their
truly ancient narrative predecessors.
There have been promising moves in the right direction amongst some scho-
lars of antiquity. Ewen Bowie, for instance, describes Antonius Diogenes’ The
Incredible Things beyond Thule and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe as “interested [...]
in flaunting their textuality” (Bowie 2009: 115). Tellingly, Bowie uses the very same
verb (“flaunt”) that Alter does in the definition of the “self-conscious novel” cited
above (Alter 1975: x). Classicist Tim Whitmarsh has written about the “notable self-
reflexivity” in Xenophon’s An Ephesian tale (Whitmarsh 2011: 4), while literary
theorist Massimo Fusillo discusses the “extremely interesting literary self-con-
sciousness” in Chariton’s Adventures of Chaireas and Callirhoe and other ancient
novels (Fusillo 2009: 166). Sociologist Barry Sandywell, going back as far as Home-
ric epic, boldly declares that the Odyssey “contains the first explicit examples of
reflexive narration,” and that Hesiod’s Works and Days represents “the earliest
known attempt to write reflexively, creating a text in which the author, like a
prophetic mediator, is himself embedded” (Sandywell 1996: 98, 169).
Despite these admirable advancements, the fact that narrative narcissism
remains so rarely employed as an analytical lens in discussions of ancient narra-
tives prompts me to want to ring a cautionary bell: by only peripherally alluding to
narcissistic elements in ancient narratives (or ignoring them altogether), we miss
the complex ways in which ancient narratives thematize and thus theorize their
own existence and interpretation. This subtly reinforces some critics’ pejorative
assessments of ancient narratives (e.g., Graham Anderson’s description of Xeno-
 

phon’s An Ephesian tale as “a specimen of penny dreadful literature in antiquity”

[Anderson 2008: 125]). Despite some ancient authors’ similar assessments of the
novel, or romance genre,4 I argue that moments of narcissism across many

4 The terminology is debated. See the discussion in Reardon (1991: 3–14).

 Narcissus has been with us 37

different kinds of ancient narrative reveal a level of literary sophistication that too
often remains neglected in contemporary scholarly discourse.

3 Narcissistic narratives: Frameworks

As Hutcheon underscores, narrative narcissism can take various forms. In some
cases, a self-conscious text refers explicitly to itself as narrative or text; the
narration, in other words, becomes part of the subject matter. This is most often
the kind of narrative narcissism one finds in the postmodern metafiction with
which critics tend to associate literary self-reflexivity. In other cases, however,
self-reflexivity takes an implicit form; that is, the narrative is not explicitly self-
referential, but it employs the storytelling conventions of certain narrative genres
in such a way as to critique, parody, transgress, or challenge them. At times, the
language draws explicit attention to the constructed nature of the text as text,
referring directly to the difficulties of producing and interpreting language. At
other times, the language calls attention to itself because it is stylistically opaque
or difficult; in the style of Brechtian theatre, the language is geared toward
maintaining the audience’s critical distance. The storytelling does not allow the
reader to “get lost” in the story or to identify completely with the characters – in
these cases, the language disallows Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief”
(Coleridge 1847: 442).
Hutcheon proffers a fourfold typology for classifying these different instances
of narrative narcissism: she distinguishes between diegetic and linguistic self-
consciousness, where the former are concerned with the storytelling (diegesis),
and the latter, with the language more generally. Additionally, Hutcheon breaks
down each of those categories into overt and covert examples, resulting in the
following four categories: overt diegetic, covert diegetic, overt linguistic, covert
linguistic (Hutcheon 1984: 7). I find it useful generally to recognize distinctions in
terms of diegetic/linguistic and overt/covert kinds of narrative narcissism. At the
same time, however, such tidy classificatory demarcations can occlude the var-
ious contingencies that always are operative in the interpretive process.
Like Hutcheon, I wish to develop several allegorical connections between
Ovid’s myth and narcissistic narratives, but from a slightly different direction
than her account, which reads Narcissus as the modern novel. The very fact that
Ovid’s myth is housed in a larger epic called Metamorphoses (literally, a transfor-
mation of shape or form) is illuminating: Narcissus changes form, as Hutcheon
points out. But what happens if we consider Echo as a literary trope, as well?
Echo, too, changes form. She begins as an embodied nymph, one who “possessed
a form” (361–362). Yet, following Juno’s punishment and Narcissus’ rejection, as
38 Michal Beth Dinkler

she languishes alone in the hills, her form changes: her “miserable body wastes
away . . . nothing remains except her bones and voice” (398). Finally, Ovid writes,
she becomes entirely incorporeal: “her bones have turned to stone” (399). Even
Echo’s personality changes over the course of the narrative; outgoing and talka-
tive at the start, she ends the tale sad and alone.
The significant point here is that Echo herself controls none of these forma-
tional shifts. She is transfigured by Juno, and then, eventually, by the grief
engendered by thwarted desire. More specifically, Juno’s retribution means that
the previously garrulous nymph cannot initiate speech: “She cannot choose but
wait the moment when his voice may give to her an answer” (374–375). The very
vocalization of her desire (that is, her expression) depends on speech as delivered
by another. Moreover, Echo’s intentionality when she repeats the words she is
given has no bearing on the kind of reception she receives. When Narcissus calls
out, “Oh, let us come together!” Echo repeats: “Oh, let us come together!” (370).
Though she hurries out of the woods “in accordance with her words,” she meets
rejection: “He flies from her and as he leaves her says, ‘Take off your hands! You
will not fold your arms around me. Better death than that such a one should ever
caress me!’” (370). Echo’s actions “in accordance with her words” are actually in
accordance only with what she intended; they were not, after all, her words
originally, and their reception depends on external factors outside her control.
Herein lie several comparisons with ancient narrative self-reflexivity that
might usefully nuance Hutcheon’s fourfold typology. The generic mode of deliv-
ery affects the degree of narcissism in any given narrative moment. Hesiod’s
assertion that “when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants [about the
Olympian gods] he forgets his heaviness” takes on deeper self-reflective signifi-
cance when one recognizes that the Theogony was sung aloud in poetry competi-
tions (Theogony 103). Alternatively, in Euripides’ tragic drama Hippolytus, an
actor playing Theseus would have narrated his own actions aloud, while opening
and (silently) “reading” Phaedra’s tragic message:

What’s this? What can it be, this tablet hanging from her dear hand? Does it want to tell me
of something I do not know? Has the poor woman written me a message of entreaty about
our marriage and children? Fear not, poor woman: there is no woman who shall take
possession of the bed and house of Theseus. See, the impress of the dead woman’s gold-
chased seal attracts my eyes. Come, let me open its sealed wrappings and see what it wishes
to tell me. (Hippolytus 856–865)5

5 This and a passage from Augustine’s Confessions are regularly cited as evidence of silent
reading in antiquity, though the level of audibility is debated. See Knox (1968); Johnson (2000);
and Saenger (1997).
 Narcissus has been with us 39

In this case, the dramatic scene – performed live – would not be so redolent of
reflexivity as, say, Hamlet’s famous staging of a play in Act III, scene 2 of Hamlet.
At the same time, the degree of a narrative’s narcissism also depends on its actual
instantiation, or reception, in any given historical moment. To return to the above
example from Hippolytus, Theseus’ reading of Phaedra’s writing tablet becomes
more deeply narcissistic if the script of Hippolytus is read – as I read it now –
silently, as a written text on a page. In the latter case, Euripides’ narrative itself
comes closer to Phaedra’s written message, and Theseus and reader can more
readily say together, “Come, let me open its sealed wrappings and see what it
wishes to tell me” (Hippolytus 865). In other words, the degree to which a
narrative can be read as reflexive is not wholly determined by authorial intention.
It also depends on the context of a narrative’s reception.
Those who hold that reflexivity is a feature unique to modern novelistic
discourse appear to equate narrative narcissism with authorial intent; that is, an
author must mean for the narrative to reflect on itself to be considered metafic-
tional or self-reflexive. Yet Paul de Man is also right: a narrative can be read as
“the allegory of its own reading” even if an author did not write it as such (de Man
1979: 77); conversely, a narrative can also be read as an allegory of its own telling.
Surely, metaphors for writing or scenes of characters reading narratives also can
be read as meta-theoretical reflections on a text regardless of whether an author
intended for them to be read so. Moreover, as the example of an individual
silently skimming a dramatic script demonstrates, the original, intended mode of
delivery is not always how a narrative is actually received.
In what follows, I point toward different forms of narrative narcissism across
a wide variety of ancient narratives, recognizing that the realities of narrative
production, the always-fluid dynamics of readerly interpretation, and the con-
texts of delivery and reception directly affect their relative degrees of reflexivity.6

4 First- and second-person references to narrators

and readers
Turning to ancient narratives, one finds textual self-awareness in first-person
references to the narrator or author as a narrating self. Prologues, prefaces, and

6 Most of my examples in this article are drawn from Greek and Roman narratives, but I do not
mean to imply that other ancient contexts did not also give rise to narcissistic narratives. See, e.g.,
 

Stein (2012); Sonnet (1997).

40 Michal Beth Dinkler

literary frames in particular often display self-referentiality in this way. The

prologue of Apuleius’ Roman novel, The golden ass (also called Metamorphoses),
presents a famous conundrum. Scholars have long sought to answer the question
posed in the text itself: “What I should like to do is weave together different tales
in this Milesian mode of storytelling [...] So let me begin! Who is the narrator?”
(1.1, 8–9).7 The question, articulated in the third person, but referring to the first
person narrator himself, effectively collapses the traditional distinction between
story and discourse levels through metalepsis, as the narrator’s and characters’
worlds coincide.
Or consider a second-century BCE letter from the Hellenistic Jewish writer
Aristeas to Philocrates, which begins less provocatively than The golden ass, but
no less self-consciously:

Inasmuch as the account of our deputation to Eleazar, the High Priest of the Jews, is worth
narrating, Philocrates, and because you set a high value, as you constantly remind me, on
hearing the motives and purposes of our mission, I have endeavored to set the matter forth
clearly. (1.1–12)

The Jewish historian Josephus begins his Contra Apion with references to his own
earlier writings and the need for him to write again:

I think that, by my books of the Antiquities of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus, I have
made sufficiently clear to any who may pursue that work the extreme antiquity of our Jewish
race [...] That history [...] is taken out of our sacred books but translated by me into Greek.
Since, however, I observe that a considerable number of persons [...] discredit what I have
written in my history [...] I consider it my duty to write somewhat briefly about all these
points. (1.1)

At times, an author will preface a subsequent volume with first-person references,

creating a kind of self-conscious bridge between installments. Josephus begins
the second volume of Contra Apion:

In the first volume of this work, my most honored Epaphroditus, I demonstrated the
antiquity of our race, corroborating my statements by the writings of the Phoenicians,
Chaldeans, and Egyptians, besides citing as witnesses numerous Greek historians [...] I shall
now proceed to refute the rest of the authors who have attacked us. (2.1–2)

7 On Apuleius from a narratological perspective, see especially Winkler (1985) and Harrison
(1997).
 Narcissus has been with us 41

The prologues of the biblical Gospel of Luke and its sequel, the Acts of the
Apostles, begin similarly, with references to the author’s own writing process and
a direct address to the reader. So begins the Gospel:

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account/narrative of the events that
have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the
beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating
everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent
Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have
been instructed. (Luke 1.1–4)8

At the beginning of the book of Acts, the text again refers to its own textuality: “I
wrote the first book, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began both to do and to
teach [...]” (1.1). The ancient novelist Chariton creates a similar kind of self-
referential bridge, beginning Book Adventures of Chareas and Callirhoe with
reference to what was “set out in my earlier account: and what follows I will now
narrate [...]” (5.1.2). These opening frames and narrative bridges refer to their own
literary constructedness, using the device of reflexive first-person narration.
In some cases, characters in the story refer to themselves as narrators.
Apuleius’ Metamorphoses relates the love story of Charite and Tlepolemus in two
parts, the second part narrated by a slave from Charite’s household. The slave
begins with a self-referential disclaimer, which Richard Hunter describes as
“glor[ying] in the writtenness of the Metamorphoses as a whole” (Hunter 2008:
268): “I shall tell you what happened from the beginning. It is a sequence of
events which persons more learned than I, writers whom Fortune has invested
with fluency of the pen, can appropriately commit to paper as an example of
historical narrative” (8.1.3; trans. Walsh). Another example is that of a narrating
midwife in the second-century CE Latin apocryphal Gospel, The infancy gospel of
Thomas. There, the midwife refers to herself as narrator in a prayer just before
recounting the miracle of Jesus’ birth and Mary’s perpetual virginity: “Almighty
Father, what is this great marvel I have seen [...] What should I do? How can I
relate what I have seen? [...] Attend to my words and keep them in your heart”
(70.3).
Such internal, or tertiary, narrators vary widely in terms of their assessments
of their own narrations.9 Some, like the slave above, (ostensibly) downplay their

8 Cf. the famous prologue of John (1.1–18): it refers to “the Word” (logos) – a philosophically rich
and complicated concept that has long been conflated with the Gospel narrative in Christian
tradition – but does not explicitly use first- or second-person direct address.
9 On theories and terminology for ancient narration, see Jong et al. (2004).
42 Michal Beth Dinkler

own storytelling acumen, while others lament the task of telling a tale at all. The
herald in the fifth-century BCE Attic tragedy Agamemnon, for instance, declares
that “An auspicious day one should not mar with a tale of misfortune – the honor
due to the gods keeps them apart” (636–637); of course, he then proceeds to tell a
tale of misfortune.
Narrative narcissism also appears in direct references to readers or recipients
of the narrative. To point again to Chariton, the start of the final book of Adven-
tures of Chaireas and Callirhoe declares:

And I think that this last book will prove very pleasurable to its readers: it cleanses away the
grim events of the earlier ones. There will be no more pirates or slavery or lawsuits or
fighting or suicide or wars or conquests; now there will be lawful love and sanctioned
marriage. (8.1.4)

The canonical Gospel of Mark addresses recipients of the narrative directly,

appealing to the reader parenthetically in the midst of Jesus’ apocalyptic warning:
“But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be
(let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains”
(13.14).10

5 Scenes of characters reading, writing, and

interpreting texts
In addition to overt references to narrators and readers, ancient narratives also
include scenes in which characters are reading and interpreting narratives. Such
scenes implicitly thematize the larger narrative in which they are situated. As
Simon Goldhill observes with respect to the ancient Greek and Roman novels,
“The scenes of reading in the text are witty, knowing, and cultured” (Goldhill
2008: 193, emphasis original). They are, in Hutcheon’s terms, covert instances of
narrative narcissism.
Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon provides a ready example. Clitophon
describes himself reading a book intermittently as he lurks around his beloved
Leucippe:

10 The meaning of this Markan phrase has been the subject of speculation in New Testament
studies. Most scholars take the aside to be directed at the reader of the Gospel, not an intra-
narrative reference to Jesus’ listeners as readers of Daniel (Daniel 9.27 refers to the “abomination
of desolation”).
 Narcissus has been with us 43

When I arose, I deliberately began to amble around the inner parts of the house in full view
of the girl. All the while I held a book, and hunched over it to read; but whenever I reached
her door, I peeked up surreptitiously. After several circuits of the course I had drenched
myself with desire thus inspired by the sight of her, and I left with a sickness in my soul.
(Leucippe and Clitophon 1.6.6; trans. Whitmarsh)

In this scene, which Helen Morales calls “an extraordinary passage of literary
mirroring,” two acts of viewing are conflated into one act of erotic interpretation
(Morales 2004: 79). Clitophon’s reading of book and body is generative: it leaves
him inspired. Read through the lens of narrative narcissism, this scene depicts the
implied author’s inspiration, described – in line with the pervasive and persistent
ancient trope – as an illness (Clark 1997: esp. 40–60).
Scenes of letter writing and reading also appear in ancient Greek narratives
and often serve as reflections on the experience of interpreting written texts.11 For
instance, in Achilles Tatius’ story, after Clitophon receives a letter from his lover
Leucippe, whom he had believed dead, he reflects explicitly on the complex
affective responses engendered by reading: “When I read this, I experienced
every sort of reaction at the same time: I burned, paled, marveled, disbelieved,
rejoiced, and brooded” (Leucippe and Clitophon 5.19). Diverse reactions to reading
letters are instantiated narratively in the biblical Acts of the Apostles, where
Antiochan believers rejoice after reading a letter from leaders in Jerusalem (15.31).
But the apostle Paul says that letters from the Jewish high priest and elders led
him to persecute Jesus-followers in Jerusalem (22.5).
At times, the characters are not literally reading the pages of a book or letter,
but they are reading – that is, interpreting – the “texts” of their own or other
characters’ lives, in true Ricoeurian fashion:12 “Scenes in which characters tell
each other their life story (their diegemata, ‘narratives’) are prominent in the
ancient novels; such scenes may amount, with more or less explicit self-referenti-
ality, to an oral telling of the novel we are reading” (Hunter 2008: 267). Consider a
case like Heliodorus’ Ethiopian Romance, in which the two main characters,
Theagenes and Charicleia, interpret the chaotic plot of their own love story.
Charicleia comforts the distraught Theagenes by pointing out: “We can take hope
from our experience of the past, where we have already frequently survived even
more implausible situations” (5.7.1).13 Reflecting on this scene, Tim Whitmarsh
writes that Charicleia “plays the role of an adept interpreter of plot, extrapolating

11 On fictional letters as narrative device, see Rosenmeyer (2001).

12 See Paul Ricoeur’s analogy between reading texts and reading actions in Ricoeur (2009 [1981]:
197–221).
13 The word for “implausible” (apistoterōn) also appears in Lucian’s famous fiction, True stories
(1.4, and esp. 1.25).
44 Michal Beth Dinkler

from the narrative so far to predict what will happen” (Whitmarsh 2011: 229).
Later, Charicleia refuses initially to reveal herself (despite Theagenes directing
her to do so), explaining that “a story for which the deity has established complex
beginnings must also reach its ends (telē) at greater length” (9.24.4).
The theme of mis/recognition often is integrally woven into such scenes of
inter-character interpretation – a topos that goes back, of course, to the Odyssey,
and lies right at the center of Ovid’s account of Narcissus. In many cases, one
character’s (re)narrated life plot provides the clue by which another character can
correctly identify her/him. Conversely, not knowing another character’s story
leads to (often comical, sometimes tragic) misidentifications. So, for example, in
Xenophon’s Ephesian Tale, Hippothous only recognizes Anthia when she tells the
tale of what has happened to her. She, on the other hand, admits that he is a
closed book to her; she cannot read him (5.9.6–8).

6 Metaphors for writing and reading

Anton Bitel notes that in ancient literature, “counterfeit coinage can be used as a
metaphor for fiction” (Bitel 2009: 230). Lucian, for example, advises historians to
avoid writing that is “just fable” because readers will discern and reject what is
“counterfeit” in favor of the “correctly minted” (How to write history 10). Bitel thus
reads a moment in Petronius’ Latin novel Satyrica as “extraordinarily reflexive.”
In the scene, the wealthy freedman Trimalchio tells the tale of the origins of
Corinthian bronze:

When Troy was captured, Hannibal, a crafty man and a great slippery character, piled up all
of the statues, bronze, gold, and silver, into one heap and set them alight; they were melded
together into a bronze mixture. So craftsmen took pieces out of this lump and made small
bowls and serving dishes and statuettes. Corinthian bronzes were produced this way from
metals all mixed together, neither one kind nor another. (50.5–6)

The trouble is that Trimalchio’s version confuses the already-mythic story as told
previously by Pliny (Natural history 34.6).14 As such, Trimalchio’s narrative is a
“confused amalgam of disparate elements” that “appears in a text which is in its
turn a confused amalgam of disparate elements” (Bitel 2009: 230). In light of
Petronius’ moment of narrative narcissism, and the metaphoric use of the coin,
Bitel proposes that Apuleius, Roman author of the Latin Metamorphoses men-
tioned above, “might be following Petronius in using a prized metal alloy as a

14 Cf. Connors (1998: 20).

 Narcissus has been with us 45

powerful metaphor for the heterogeneous, syncretic nature of his prose fiction”
(Bitel 2009: 231).
Metaphorical figures in the text can, at times, create another kind of narrative
narcissism: the mise en abyme, an internal reduplication of the work. Lucien
Dällenbach explains mise en abyme this way: “Organe de retour de l’oeuvre sur
elle-même, la mise en abyme apparaît comme une modalité de la réflexion” [An
organ of the work that turns back on itself, the mise en abyme appears as a mode
of reflection] (Dällenbach 1977: 16).15 Consider narratologist Mieke Bal’s reading
of the second-century CE narrative, The martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas
(widely believed to be the first autobiographical text written by a woman). Point-
ing to Perpetua’s literal contest with beasts in the arena, Bal proposes that contest
also functions metaphorically – and consequently, reflexively – as a structural
and thematic device: “If a story ‘about’ a contest is set in a structure based on
contest, we can happily speak of the contest as an iconic sign, the actual contest
with the beast being the mise en abyme of the story [...] This figure [contest] makes
the story a highly problematic self-reflexive text whose initial contradictions
generate the others” (Bal 2012: 136). The “problematic” contradictions to which
Bal refers in part concern Perpetua’s gender as an author/narrator. I cannot do
justice here to the rich and complicated dynamics Bal interrogates in this regard.
It is enough for the purposes of this article to note that in the ancient world, the
metaphor of the agōn, or contest, was inextricably bound up with notions of
verbal or written rhetoric as a fundamentally “manly” pursuit (e.g., Quintilian,
 

Institutes, 8.3.6–8).
Examples of reflexive metaphorical figures in ancient narrative abound:
Weaving is a popular metaphor for storytelling (cf. Snyder 1981); the figure of the
road often signifies the writing as journey (e.g., Morris 2007); anatomical bodies
 

stand in for literary bodies (e.g., Keith 1999); seals and signets (which validate
signatures in the real world) serve symbolically to authenticate narrators in story
worlds, as well (e.g., Batchelder 1994).
 

7 The music of the voice

Metaphors like those above typically depend upon the power of visual imagery.
This is common even in critical narratological discourse, where scholars often
treat narrative elements in visual terms (reflexivity itself is a prime example).
Indeed, the trope of Narcissus is essentially visual. Yet the figure of Echo helps

15 Dällenbach credits the phrase mise en abyme to André Gide.

46 Michal Beth Dinkler

here, as well. Echo is auditory, stripped of her visual, bodily elements and left as
solely a matter of sound. The trope of Echo invites us to listen also for those
elements of narrative that ring a certain way in the ear – the tone and tenor of
terms, the clatter and clash of consonants, the pace and sound patterns of
sentences. To our catalogue of varying kinds of narrative self-reflexivity, then, we
can add an author’s conscious manipulations of the sounds of the language.
The sonorous dimensions of narrative were significant for ancient authors, as
is evidenced in both theoretical and practical contexts. It is well known, for
example, that Aristotle, theorizing about narrative genres like tragedy, declared
that humans instinctively enjoy the melody and rhythm of language (Poetics
4.1448b 19–20). Or consider Apuleius’ famous prologue to Metamorphoses, which
refers directly to the narrator’s desire “to stroke your approving ears with some
elegant whispers” (1.2–3).16 We also have an abundance of examples of such self-
conscious composition from ancient narratives themselves. Perhaps most ob-
viously, the entire genre of oral epic poetry functioned, to use the description of
Albert Lord, like a “living organism” that was learned and composed orally using
traditional metrical formulas and formulaic expressions (Lord 1960: 4; cf. Ong
1982; Foley 1995).

8 “For once, then, something”

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
[...]
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture
[...]
What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz?
For once, then, something.
(Robert Frost)17

I have argued throughout this article that considering narcissistic narrative to be

only a modern literary development is a categorical mistake. What we miss when
we limit our considerations of narrative narcissism to overt examples of post/
modern “metafiction” is the fact that reflexivity permeates ancient narratives.
Thus it can be both productive and appropriate to treat these ancient instances as

16 This and many other examples are discussed in Rimell (2007).

17 Robert Frost’s poem, “For once, then, something,” is a reflection on Ovid’s myth.
 Narcissus has been with us 47

forms of narcissistic narrative. Reading Ovid’s Narcissus and Echo myth allegori-
cally with an eye (and an ear?) toward recovering the figure of Echo in our critical
discourse suggests the following: Narcissistic narratives appear in many forms,
and ought to be conceived as variously located on a spectrum of explicitness,
ranging from a narrator’s first-person direct reflections on the task of narration, to
scenes of characters in a narrative interpreting narratives, to metaphorical figures
that represent the task of reading or writing implicitly. Moreover, narrative
narcissism is not solely contingent upon authorial intent. Texts can be read as
reflexive whether the author intended them to be read in such a way or not, and
modes of delivery and performance (intended and actual) impact such reception,
as well.
In light of the above, the common claim that narcissism belongs to the genre
of the modern novel ought to be revised to include all narratives, not least those
from antiquity. I have sought in the foregoing article to reveal narcissistic ele-
ments in ancient narrative, and to highlight the many ways in which ancient
narratives are, to use John Morgan’s formulation, concerned with “the business of
receiving stories (either through listening or reading) and transmitting them
(either through telling or writing)”18. I have argued that failed attunement to this
archive of examples creates an unfortunate blind spot for contemporary narratol-
ogy. As Frost might say, we kneel at the well-curbs, looking, but “never seeing.”
To return yet again to Ovid’s Narcissus and Echo myth, I have been insisting
that we ought to bring Echo back into our critical narratological discourse. Yet
Echo’s fate is famously tragic. She suffers first from Narcissus’ failure to see her;
her suffering then is multiplied when, after he finally sees her, he rejects her.
Once revealed, then reviled, Echo “ever after lives concealed” (397). Hopefully,
the plot of our theoretical inquiries will not in this case result in repetition.

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