Lezioni di anatomia: il romanzo di Achille Tazio

An emphasis on the body is integral to the construction and development of Achilles Tatius' characters. Needless to say, the narrator is interested in describing their feelings and psychological reactions as well, but psychology is always conveyed through a corporeal dimension. While a focus on the human body is a general feature of the Greek novel, the “Leucippe” makes the most of it and brings it to the extreme. The eyes are the protagonists of the first two books, where the lovers feed their passion by gazing at each other whenever they meet. The focus then shifts to the mouth in the discussion of love at the end of the second book, where the interlocutors describe at length the mechanics of kissing. The bowels play a prime role in the third book, when pirates abduct Leucippe and seemingly disembowel her to perform a human sacrifice. This journey into human anatomy parallels the sequence of the episodes and further develops in what follows: while the story unfolds, the writer directs his (and his readers') gaze towards the different parts of the characters' body. This paper explores the novel's anatomic obsession and suggests a meta-literary interpretation.