"IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A REVELLER": THE CLASSICAL INTERTEXT IN DONNA TARTT'S THE SECRET HISTORY (part 2)

Abstract

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.