neilgodfrey

Which, if either, is more likely to be the earlier story:

A bare bones narrative that does not offer motivations for the actions of the characters?

Or

A slightly more expanded version of the same basic narrative that does give the characters motivations?

Or is this a pointless question presented as starkly as this? (I'm thinking, of course, of literature produced in 1st-2nd centuries of the Roman imperial era and comparable cultures.)

What, if any, are the "literary norms" that might help with this question?

Thanks
Neil Godfrey
http://vridar.wordpress.com

Roger Pearse

I don't believe that there can be a hard-and-fast rule.

I think of the mess of late 4th century historical texts, such as Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, the epitome of Aurelius Victor, Eusebius/Jerome's Chronicle, the Chronography of 354, etc. (The reason this comes to mind is that I have been transcribing the Chronography lately, and I was struck by the very close relation between some passages in the Chronicle of Rome in that work and Jerome's Chronicle.) All of these texts are more or less interrelated, and use each other or common sources or common knowledge.

Thus texts get abbreviated; expanded, and sometimes both, as we saw in another thread recently looking at the epitome of Aurelius Victor, which contained material not in the full text.

I don't believe that as stated we can tell. A chronicler of the kind seen in Eusebius' Chronicle, or the Chronography, will omit most motive material, in order to fit the brief space on the page. A history writer such as Eutropius will add this in, from other sources, or from his own perception of the underlying story that the facts tell or the moral that he wants to point.

There is the general text-critical presumption that the for two variants of a common text the shorter is more likely to be original. But even this is not always the case. One manuscript (codex Agobardinus) of one of Tertullian's works (De exhortatione castitatis 10:5) includes a quotation from the Montanist prophetess Priscilla, which is silently omitted from the mss in another family (the Cluny-type mss.). But the omission is later -- and probably medieval -- to leave out the words of the heretic.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

neilgodfrey

damn. not the answer i was hoping for. anyone else? :frown:

(but thanks)

neilgodfrey

Thinking this through some more: I don't know Eutropius's work so can you point me to an example or two illustrating E's adding motive material to a narrative or history? And does he do this in places where as far as we can tell no motives were portrayed in the original?

Does E turn some of his source material into something of a morality tale and is this "morality tale" intention the basis for his adding various motives?

The other examples you offer here seem to point to motives for actions being omitted from a subsequent telling of narrative for various reasons.

I don't like to sound like I'm shifting the goalposts here, but my question was stated in briefest terms. What is behind it is the question of whether one is more likely to find key turning points in the plot of the narrative that are originally told with some explanation of the cause or motive than a plot which does appear to turn on a clear motive.

My bottom line question and the reason I am wondering about any related "literary norm", is whether Mark's story of the betrayal by Judas which lacks any obvious motive is more likely to be based on an earlier story that was more logically coherent with action turning on a clear motive.

I would not think the addition of morality tales would tell us anything about the validity of this trajectory (from a plot action embedded in motive to bare bones plot-action) since I imagine that morality tale stories are really add-ons, and not integral to the original plot or turning point actions.

But at the same time I wonder if my question is leading to something forever circular.


Thanks
Neil Godfrey
http://vridar.wordpress.com