Mouvance and the art of fiction in performance in manuscripts of a Demotic Egyptian novella

Abstract

Substantial textual variation found across manuscripts of a Demotic Egyptian novella, The prebend of Amun, bears upon closer examination the features of mouvance, a kind of textual impermanence found in written versions of literature for which performance contexts are not only ongoing but are constitutive of their very textual shape. Alongside this mouvance, manuscripts of this work also maintain a high level of similarity and coherence down to the phrasal and word level. I argue that this unique combination of sameness and mouvance points to the desire of performers who possessed libretto-like copies of The prebend of Amun to tweak their texts in order to match their understanding of this work of prose fiction.