The Reader in the “Comedy of Errors” of the Ancient Greek Novel

Abstract

In my study I focus on a problem of the comedy of errors created via the qui pro quo technique which is also treated as a prism through which we can observe the relations between particular texts of ancient Greek novels and their implied audience. The conducted analyses of the ways in which the qui pro quo can be used in this kind of texts allow us to observe the phenomenon of a surprising broadening and diversifying of its functions, from the element serving the complication of a plot within individual stages of the novel’s action in early romances to the multifunction instrument in later works. The discussed motif seems to be one of the most tangible mechanisms organizing the world of a novel in all of its aspects in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon and Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. One can even state that with this instrument the authors provoke their reader to an aesthetic reflection on the work, the convention and, finally, the reader’s own position towards the world of the novel and it seems that this effect comprises the author’s basic creative idea.