Reflections on Ancient Narrative and Ethics

I

Ralph and Libby Cohen have been close friends for about forty years. For much of that time, I have been an Advisory Editor of New Literary History. It has been a privilege to perform this modest service, since, as Rita Felski and Herbert Tucker note in their invitation to participate in this tribute, Ralph Cohen's editorship of the journal is "an achievement without precedent in the profession."

Apart from the planning of a few special numbers, I cannot say that I have contributed a great deal of "advice" over this period. On the other hand, New Literary History has influenced my thinking about literature in several ways, and this volume of essays in Ralph's honor may be an appropriate place to acknowledge a part of that debt. For in reality, it is not only Ralph who is stepping down. Those who have been associated with him over the years are also taking their leave. A page is being turned in the journal's history, and perhaps in literary history as well.

When the first number of New Literary History appeared in 1969, a movement that privileged theory over historical or philological criticism was already well-advanced. That period ended, and another is making some progress in setting out its priorities. New Literary History played a major role in the earlier phase of discussion and will doubtless continue to do so. As this takes place, it will be important to keep in mind some of its traditional strengths. Under Ralph Cohen's editorship the journal has never taken a "position," concealed a "perspective," acquired a stable of "regulars," or proclaimed an "ideology." It has remained an open forum. The only real question that has been raised about the contributions has concerned their quality. Thanks to Ralph these have remained at a high level, making New Literary History the standard by which other theoretical journals in the field of literature are judged.

One can look back through the previous volumes, as I sometimes do, and get a reasonably accurate idea of the way in which critical writing has evolved over the past two generations. This is particularly valuable for a person like myself, who initially came to literary studies as an outsider (from the sciences). Some years after changing fields, I met Ralph Cohen, I believe in 1972. By that time, I had become a specialist in the late ancient and medieval periods. I was in conversation with a number of colleagues, among them Marshall McLuhan and Jack Goody, about writing a book on medieval oral and written traditions, dealing primarily with social and religious developments. I explained to Ralph that this involved a revision of the received historiography of the late Middle Ages, which had been largely invented by the romantics. He invited me to send my thoughts to New Literary History and they were published under the title, "The Middle Ages as Subject and Object: Romantic Attitudes and Academic Medievalism."¹ Other articles followed, and the essays subsequently appeared in a pair of volumes in English and French.² In this respect one might say that Ralph Cohen and New Literary History have been among my most constant intellectual companions over the years.

II

I would like to thank Ralph for admitting a rather unusual fellow traveler to his distinguished company, and to do so in a way which offers a little food for thought on a topic that has frequently been taken up in New Literary History: narrative.³

The reiterated expression of interest in narrative has doubtless been inspired by Ralph's inquiries into the nature and function of literary genres, in which the study of narrative occupies an important place. In one area, namely medieval studies, early oral and written traditions have been the focus of discussion;⁴ however, in general the critical issues that have been raised in the articles on narrative have been concerned with the period after 1600, many in fact dealing with developments that have their origin in nineteenth-and twentieth-century literary studies. Less attention has been paid to the Western roots of narrative thinking in the...