"IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A REVELLER": THE CLASSICAL INTERTEXT IN DONNA TARTT'S THE SECRET HISTORY (Part 1)
Abstract
1. INTRODUCTION "Did I really want to spend my college career and subsequently my life looking at pictures of broken kouroi and poring over Greek particles?" (The Secret History, p.80). The dilemma cif Richard Papen, the narrator of American author Donna Tartt's 660-page debut novel The Secret History, is hardly typical of a modem best-selling thriller - but then Tartt's novel, although a best-seller, is not your average thriller. Like Eco's The Name of the Rose, it not only provides for suspense but also for class, having, as it does, a cast of students of the Classics and thus a classical field of reference. As my title, pace Calvino, suggests, Tartt's novel is fertilized with the cross-pollination of intertext. While at times being somewhat highbrow, it is nevertheless accessible to the educated non-classicist.Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (BY-NC-ND 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).