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