Our focus and scope

As the name Ancient Narrative indicates, the areas of interest of the journal are: Greek, Roman, Jewish narrative traditions, including ancient novels, so-called "fringe novels", as well as the novelistic fragments; narrative texts of the Byzantine age, early Christian narrative texts - and the reception of these works in modern literature, film and music. Ancient Narrative encourages approaches which range from editorial and philological work on these texts, and literary-theoretical studies, to theological, sociological, cultural and anthropological approaches. No particular area or methodology is preferred. The audience of our journal comprises not only those who work mainly in classical or religious studies but all those who are interested in the birth and development of narrative fiction in all its aspects, from antiquity to modern times.

Our review process

As to ensure the highest quality of our publications, all contributions are subjected to rigorous peer review. In addition, they receive high-quality input from our Advisory and Editorial Boards consisting of authoritative scholars in the field.

Since we keep the review process timely, the time between submission and publication is usually short.

Contributions are published online immediately after acceptance so that they are picked up by the scholarly community quickly and can even be discussed and possibly revised by the authors before they are printed in their final form.

Our publications

Ancient Narrative (AN) is first and foremost an electronic journal. At the end of the year the authors have the opportunity to revise their articles. A volume containing all revised articles of the past year will appear both in print and on the website.

Besides full articles, we publish bibliographical information as well as brief notes on relevant subjects. The editors also invite specialists for reviews, which are published in the electronic journal and in the annual printed volume of AN.

The journal also publishes special, theme-oriented issues. Your suggestions for such issues are very welcome.

Last but not least, we publish the book series Ancient Narrative Supplements (ANS). A list of all published supplements can be found in the Archives and on the website of Barkhuis Publishing, the publisher of AN. 

If you are interested in publishing in one of the above publications, please contact the General Editor.

Sign up

We encourage readers to sign up for the publishing notification service for this journal. Registered readers will receive an email for each new issue of the journal, each new volume of the book series, and news about conferences.

Open access policy and publication costs

Publishing an article, review or special issue in AN:
- No cost involved for the author.
- Every author receives a free hardcover print volume.
- Open access upon publication.

Publishing a volume in the book series Ancient Narrative Supplements:
- No cost involved for the author.
- Every author receives a free hardcover print volume.
- Authors are free to distribute their work after two years.
- Open access upon publication costs € 4000,-.
- Open access one year after publication costs € 2000,-.

Petronian Society Newsletter

The Petronian Society Newsletter (PSN) now has its own website, at https://ugp.rug.nl/psn, which contains all issues of PSN.