The Greek novel is close to the modern novel by its universality, as it synthesizes the epic poem, tragedy, and comedy by its representation of the world that is being abandoned by the gods, by its personal narrator that joins with the omniscient, authoritarian, and first-person narrator. Its innovation is in establishing the equality of sexes, based in Eros, understood as coincidence of opposites in the original cosmogonic and androgynous sense. The abstractness of the landscape and the sameness of both characters contribute to the appeasement of the initial split and to the establishment of the androgynous human essence as the original Oneness. On this level the modern novel will again remain in the uncoupling of Eros- Tanatos.
|
