read excerpts from the book - The Ohio State University Press

96 Pages·2012·0.4 MB·English

Literature and Identity in
The Golden Ass of Apuleius

Literature and Identity in
The Golden Ass of Apuleius

Luca Graverini
Translated from the Italian by
Benjamin Todd Lee
The Ohio State University Press • Columbus
Copyright © 2007 by Pacini Editore S.p.A.
All rights reserved.
English translation published 2012 by The Ohio State University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Graverini, Luca.
[Metamorfosi di Apuleio. English]
Literature and identity in The Golden Ass of Apuleius / Luca Graverini ; translated by Benjamin
Todd Lee.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8142-1191-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8142-1191-7 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8142-9292-1 (cd-rom)
1. Apuleius. Metamorphoses. 2. Latin fiction—History and criticism. I. Lee, Benjamin Todd.
II. Title.
PA6217.G7313 2012
873'.01—dc23
2012004578
Cover design by Jerry Dorris, AuthorSupport.com
Type set in Adobe Garamond Pro
Text design by Juliet Williams
Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na-
tional Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
ANSI Z39.48–1992.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
contents

Translator’s Note vii
Author’s Note to the English Translation ix
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Chapter 1 • A Sweet Poetics 1
1.1 “But I . . . ” 2
1.2 The ass and the cicada 10
1.3 A sweet and misleading whisper 12
1.4 Between philosophy and entertainment: Astonishment (ut mireris) 36
1.5 The poetics of the novel 38
1.6 Lucius of Patrae and Aristides of Miletus 42
Chapter 2 • Old Wives’ Tales and Servile Pleasures 51
2.1 Entertainment, initiation, aporia, and satire 52
2.2 Dissonances 57
2.3 Greedy priests 69
2.4 Isis and her sisters 75
2.5 Lucius’ shaven head 82
2.6 Horizons of expectation 89
2.7 An old wives’ tale (anilis fabula) 95
2.8 Paradox, satire, and levels of reading 118
2.9 Lucius, before and after 131
vi COnTenTS
Chapter 3 • Metamorphoses of Genres 133
3.1 Philosophers on the road 134
3.2 Eyes and ears as criteria for truth 141
3.3 Lucius and his Sirens 146
3.4 Readers, listeners, and spectators 154
Chapter 4 • Greece, Rome, Africa 165
4.1 On the road with Lucius 166
4.2 The reputation of Corinth 169
4.3 Romanization 175
4.4 Romanocentrism 179
4.5 The readership of the novel 198
4.6 Between Rome and the provinces 200
Bibliography 209
Index locorum 228
General Index 236
translator’s note

I volunteered to translate this book because, as a classicist interested in
Apuleius, I found it to be one of the most useful and stimulating pieces of
Apuleian scholarship I had come across in years. Above all it synthesizes and
makes reference to many European studies of Apuleius that are not always
easily accessible to the American reader. I hope this translation will help nar-
row the gap between European and American studies of Apuleius.
I have tried to give a lucid approximation of Graverini’s text, but many
Italian idioms do not have precise equivalents in English. The relative pov-
erty of my own prose style must be held responsible if the translation pre-
sented here turns out, in some places, to be less elegant than the original.
Nevertheless, I will be happy if the reader will be able to understand what
the author meant in the Italian.
All translations of Greek and Latin passages come from the Loeb series,
except the following:
• Greek novels, which come from the collection edited by Reardon 1989
• Apuleius’ rhetorical works (Apologia, Florida, De deo Socratis), which
come from Harrison-Hilton-Hunink 2001
Other sources of translations are mentioned when I use them. Minor
changes have been introduced to all these translations when necessary.
Translations of ancient works that are not included in the Loeb series or
in the collections cited above are my own, unless otherwise indicated in the
text.
Lastly, I would like to thank Christopher Trinacty and Victoria Neuman
for their help editing and proofreading this book. Any errors that remain
vii
viii TrAnSLATOr’S nOTe
are solely my responsibility. I would also like to thank Eugene O’Connor
and Marian Rogers for their help with the formidable task of editing and
formatting the manuscript.
Benjamin Todd Lee
Oberlin, March 2012
author’s note to the english translation

There is no rest, it seems, for Apuleian scholarship, and indeed this wide-
spread interest testifies to the appeal of studying the Metamorphoses. In the
few years since the original publication of this volume, several important
monographs and journal papers have appeared, and even more are expected
in the near future. Besides all these published and forthcoming studies, more
occasions for illuminating discussions with several colleagues have been pro-
vided by several conferences on the ancient novel—let me mention only two
recent ones here: Apuleius and Africa, held at Oberlin College in April–May
2010 and organized by the translator of this volume, with some help by the
author and other distinguished colleagues; and ISIS: The Religious Ending of
the Golden Ass, organized in Rostock in November 2008 by Wytse Keulen,
the proceedings of which have been published as volume 3 of Aspects of
Apuleius’ The Golden Ass (AAGA 2012). Equally invaluable have been the
meetings of the team that is producing the next Groningen commentary on
the last book of the Metamorphoses; I have greatly enjoyed the opportunity
to discuss different views on the novel with learned friends and colleagues
like Wytse Keulen, Stephen Harrison, Lara Nicolini, Stelios Panayotakis,
Danielle van Mal-Maeder, Ulrike Egelhaaf-Gaiser, Stefan Tilg, Friedeman
Drews, and Warren Smith. I am also most grateful to Roberto Nicolai for
the instructive and helpful conversations we had when we met in Cordoba
(Argentina) for a double event (both the Curso de posgrado Apuleyo y la
novella antigua and II Jornadas Internacionales de Estudios Clasicos), which
was organized by Marcos Carmignani, Guillermo De Santis, and Gustavo
Veneciano, the editors of the journal Ordia Prima.
And so it seems that a great deal has happened in a short time. Nev-
ertheless, though I could not abstain from some very small changes and
ix
x AUThOr’S nOTe TO The engLISh TrAnSLATIOn
additions, I limited myself to a bare minimum; I have already confessed to
being pervicax pertinax in the introduction to the original Italian edition, so
I think it will be no surprise that my positions have not changed after only
five years. On the contrary, I have even tried to restate them with further
support in a few papers that the reader might find of interest; these are cited
in the bibliography as Graverini 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2013a and b. Of
course, nobody is ever going to have the final word on the interpretation of
the Metamorphoses (or, indeed, of any first-rate literary work), and this book
is certainly not an exception. But I still think it will have something to say
for some time at least in regard to its main points: that is, to give a better
understanding of the literary and cultural identity of Apuleius’ novel, and
to challenge John Winkler’s conclusions about its general “meaning.” While
Winkler’s methods still stand, and are his most valuable legacy together with
his illuminating discussions on so many aspects of the Metamorphoses, my
hope is that I can incite at least some discussion about the nearly general
consensus, reached in the last two decades, about his “comic” interpretation
of the novel.
Last but not least, a few words are needed to express my deep gratitude.
Ben, the reason you offered to undertake the daunting task of translating my
difficult and sometimes too Byzantine Italian into good English still escapes
me: all the more reason to say a very heartfelt thank-you.
preface and acknowledgments

For many years now, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius has garnered a remark-
able degree of critical attention that, with an ever-increasing emphasis, has
demonstrated the highly sophisticated literary nature of the work, as well as
its many considerable hermeneutic difficulties. Apuleius’ pursuit of a highly
complex and elaborate narrative style is in fact combined with a sort of
essential ambiguity, which seems to leave the greatest diversity of interpretive
possibilities open to the contemporary reader: and so it is that the Metamor-
phoses can be read as a sophisticated and detached narrative divertissement; or
as an allegorical novel (roman à clef), whose goal is religious and/or philo-
sophical propaganda; as a satire of fatuous belief in otherworldly powers; or
even, for all intents and purposes, as an utterly aporetic text in its own right,
a detective novel that presents its case to the reader in the form of a mystery
that s/he alone can solve. Similarly, different genres of readings, as we shall
see, are to be found not only among modern scholars, but ancient readers
as well. At least to some degree, then, one might think that such a broad
spectrum of interpretive choices and possibilities is the result of a certain
ambiguity inherent in the text and cannot have been caused merely by the
extreme diversity found in the cultural settings of its critics—a span that
finds, to cite only two examples, Fulgentius at one end, and John Winkler at
the other. In the case of a narrative text, moreover, this ambiguity takes on a
special significance, since the possible transmission of any message (whether
religious, philosophical, or of some other sort) becomes subordinated to the
act of narration. To extrapolate any meaning from that narration is, con-
sequently, somehow random, an act inevitably determined by the exegetic
whim of the reader, as much as by the intentions of the author.
xi