Milesian tale
Wikipedia EN
The Milesian tale (Μιλησιακά, Milesiaka in Greek; in Latin fabula milesiaca, or Milesiae fabula) is a genre of fictional story prominent in ancient Greek and Roman literature. According to most authorities, a Milesian tale is a short story, fable, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually of an erotic or titillating nature. M. C. Howatson, in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989), voices the traditional view the Milesian tale is the source "of such medieval collections of tales as the Gesta Romanorum, the Decameron of Boccaccio, and the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre".
Gottskálk Jensson of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, however, offers a dissenting view or corrective, arguing the original Milesian tale was:
a type of first-person novel, a travelogue told from memory by a narrator who every now and then would relate how he encountered other characters who told him stories which he would then incorporate into the main tale through the rhetorical technique of narrative impersonation. This resulted in "a complicated narrative fabric: a travelogue carried by a main narrator with numerous subordinate tales carried by subordinate narrative voices". The best complete example of this would be Apuleius's The Golden Ass, a Roman novel written in the second century of the Common Era. Apuleius introduces his novel with the words "At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram" ("But let me join together different stories in that Milesian style"), which suggests not each story is a Milesian tale, but rather the entire joined-together collection. The idea of the Milesian tale also served as a model for the episodic narratives strung together in Petronius's Satyricon.
Wikipedia FR
Les Contes milésiens ont été traduits en latin par Sisenna (peut-être l'historien Lucius Cornelius Sisenna). Pétrone en tirerait son idée d'enchâsser des récits (comme la « matrone d'Éphèse ») directement de l'ouvrage d'Aristide.
Wikipedia IT
Caratteristica delle favole milesie è l'inserimento di altri racconti all'interno della vicenda principale, narrata in prima persona, come fanno anche Petronio nel Satyricon, per esempio narrando del ragazzo di Pergamo e della matrona di Efeso, oppure Apuleio, che esordisce nei Metamorphoseon libri XI esprimendo la volontà di «intrecciare varie favole in stile milesio».
Si trattava, com'è possibile ricavare proprio da Petronio ed Apuleio, nonché da alcune riprese in Luciano di Samosata, di racconti erotici o macabri, che riprendevano motivi delle narrazioni popolari ed erano connotati da brevità e stile rapido, forse non dissimili dalle nostre barzellette e che proprio per questo riscossero grande successo. Tuttavia proprio la loro licenziosità e il carattere di letteratura popolaresca ne decretarono la scomparsa presso le scuole di retorica e il mondo cristiano.
