Mario Baumann: Joyful voyages: Periplous and the reader’s pleasure in Diodorus’ Bibliotheke and Philostratus’ Imagines

This chapter is a comparative analysis of the periplous of the Red Sea as described in Diodorus, Bibliotheke 3.38–48 and the ecphrasis 2.17 in Philostratus’ Imagines which is arranged as a voyage with the speaker and his addressee passing through a group of islands. The chapter shows how the reader is encouraged to interact with the text in both passages, affording him pleasure by that; methodically speaking, the chapter is based on the results of the seminal study by Thomas Anz, Literatur und Lust. Glück und Unglück beim Lesen, Munich 1998.

These two passages have in common that they create a vividness and cause the reader to become imaginatively involved in the text; this is mainly due to the fact that both texts give detailed and enargetic descriptions of the regions or islands visited during the journey and that they appeal to the reader’s curiosity (cf. the numerous θαύματα pointed out by the speaker in Imagines 2.17) or his emotions (cf. the pitiful shipwreck drama described in Bibliotheke 3.40.4–8). On the other hand, though, there are significant differences as well. These differences mainly derive from both passages’ media and narrative characteristics:

(1) Different mediality
The Bibliotheke presents itself from the onset as a book written for a reading audience (cf. Bibliotheke 1.1.1 and numerous other instances where the narrator explicitly refers to his readers). The strongly emphasised “bookishness” of the Bibliotheke opens up specific ways in which the reader may derive pleasure from reading the Bibliotheke. In the periplous of book 3 e.g. the narrator often highlights the dangers encountered by the seafarers. The reader can enjoy these descriptions precisely because he is not actually accompanying any sailors but, as a reader, is in a safe position outside the recounted events. The Imagines in contrast are marked by a feigned orality: the ecphrases are stylised as impromptu speeches given by a virtuoso sophist in front of the pictures. Here, the reader is enticed to become engrossed into the descriptions, to let his imagination reign and to enjoy being carried away by the virtuoso performance of the sophist.

(2) Different narrative shaping
From a narratological point of view, the most conspicuous feature of the Bibliotheke’s periplous is its consistent focalisation, i.e. its continuous narration from the perspective of somebody sailing past the shores of the Red Sea. In Imagines 2.17, however, focalisation is much less prominent. The main narrative feature here is that the speaker “narrates away” the boundary between his verbal discourse and the picture described: he metaleptically enters the picture and positively sails through the image. Both techniques on the one hand invite the reader to let himself be involved by these descriptions; on the other hand, though, a potential for reflection and distancing is opened up in both passages—a didactic potential in the case of the Bibliotheke (learning from history), a potential to reflect on the mediality of text and image in the case of the Imagines.

These characteristics as well as the resulting impact on the reader’s pleasure have their place in the respective cultural context: it is the first century BC debate on the pleasure of reading historiography which is relevant for the Bibliotheke, while the Imagines are situated in the culture of education and performance of the Second Sophistic. This contextualisation, too, is in the focus of this chapter.