The fictional life. A narratological-rhetorical approach to characterization and fictionality in the Greek biographers in the imperial period

This research project aims at a formal description of fictionality in ancient sophists' and philosophers' biographies (that is, non-fiction with clearly fictional characteristics) from the imperial period (1st-4th cent. AD). Therefore it develops a narratological-rhetorical analysis of character construction. This project enhances our understanding of the formal specificity of fictional and non-fictional narrative literature.