This paper deals with the highly debated question of the meaning of theancient Greek novel in its contemporary society. In research of the past decades,two main approaches have been used to tackle this issue but they both leadto a deadlock. That is why this paper proposes a literary-theoretical approachto the problem. Based on the notion - formulated in modern literary theory- that literature can be regarded as a form of cognition, it argues that andclarifies the ways in which the ancient Greek novel probably had a specificmeaning and function in the first centuries A.D.
