Tales within tales : Apuleius through time

236 Pages·2000·6.059 MB·English

by  Constance S. Wright, Richard J. Schoeck, Julia Bolton Holloway

TALES
W I T H I N
TALES
Apuleius Through Time
ESSAYS IN HONOR OF
PROFESSOR EMERITUS
RICHARD J. SCHOECK
TALES
W I T H I N
TALES
Apuleius Through Time
Edited by
CONSTANCE S. WRIGHT
JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY
AMS Press
New York
Univ. Library, UC Santa Cruz 20Ô1
Library of Cong rets Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tales within tales: Apuleius through time / [edited by] Constance S.
Wright, Julia Bolton Holloway.
(AMS Studies in cultural history: no. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-404-64252-7 (hardcover, alk. paper)
1. Apuleius—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Literature. Medieval—
Roman influences. 3. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400—Sources. 4.
Apuleius—Influence. I. Wright, Constance S. II. Holloway, Julia
Bolton, 1937- III. Series.
PA6217.T26 2000
873\01—dc20 91-57968
CIP
All AMS Books are printed on acid-free paper that meets the guidelines for
performance and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Copyright © 2000 by AMS Press, Inc.
All rights reserved
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New York, NY 10003-4686, U.S.A.
Manufactured in the United States of America
P / f
Table of Contents T 2 6
O
Preface Constance S. Wright and Julia Bolton
Holloway IX
Scribal
Apuleius’ Tales within Tales in The Golden
i
Ass
by Gertrude Drake 3
n Magic in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses
by David Martinez 29
m
Narrative Enta[i]led: Metamorphic
Reflexivity in Ovid and Apuleius
by Edward Peter Nolan 37
IV The Virgin Prefigured
by John Douglas Hoag 49
The Metamorphoses of Cupid and Psyche
in Plato, Apuleius, Origen, and Chaucer
by Constance S. Wright 55
VI The Asse to the Harpe: Boethian Music in
Chaucer
by JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY 73
vn
Musical Representations of the Ass
by OLIVER B. ELLSWORTH 93
vm Chaucer and Huizinga: The Spirit of Homo
Ludens
by Richard J. Schoeck 97
IX Isis in Spenser and Apuleius
by Stella P. Revard 107
Apuleius and Midsummer Night's Dream:
Bottom's Metamorphoses
by Julia Bolton Holloway 123
Oral
XI Language and Literature from the Pueblo
Indian Perspective
by Leslie Marmon Silko 14 i
xn Henry Cornfield: Enrique Milpaz
by Rose Cordova 157
XIII An English Rose
by Rose Lloyds 165
Bibliography 183
Index 187
PLATES
1:1 Isis Lactans. Dynasty 26, 664-525 B.C., bronze. Hermitage,
Leningrad.
1:2 Serapis, after Bryaxis, late fourth century B.C. Roman copy, second
century after Christ, from Perge in Pamphylia. Antalya Museum, photo,
author.
1:3 Isis Lactans, after original of second century B.C. Roman copy,
second century after Christ, from Perge in Pamphylia. Antalya Museum,
photo author.
1:4 Niche head from Apa Jeremiah, Sakkarah, seventh century after
Christ. Coptic Museum, Cairo.
1:5 Isis from Pozzuoli, second century after Christ. Vatican Museum,
Rome, photo, author.
1:6 Isis with Harpocrates, Serapis and Dionysius, circa 140 A.D., from
Henchir al-Atermine, Tunisia. Louvre, Paris, photo, author.
1:7 Isis, sixth century after Christ. Alexandria, Aachen Cathedral.
1:8 Winged Isis, Sarcophagus Shrine 3 of Tutankhamen. Dynasty 18,
circa 1350 B.C. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
1:9 Winged Isis. Ephesus, second-third century after Christ, bronze.
Ephesus Archeological Museum, Selcuk, Turkey.
1:10 Albrecht Dürer, woodcut, 1469-98, Opening of the Fifth Seal. The
Woman Clothed with the Sun and the Seven-Headed Dragon.
1:11 Francisco Zurbaron, Immaculate Conception, circa 1630. Nuestra
Señora del Carmen, Jadraque, Guadalajara.
1:12 Anonymous Ecuadoran, eighteenth-century Virgin of Quito.
Denver Art Museum.
11:1 Psyche with her lamp discovers Cupid. Giulio Romano (1499-
1546). The Sala di Psiche, Palazzo del Te. The Hall of Psyche is devoted to a
series of illustrations of Apuleius* story.
11:2 Psyche, despondent and alone, with the labor of sorting the piles
of grain, Giulio Romano.
11:3 Cupid and Psyche at their nuptial banquet on Mount Olympus;
the conclusion of Apuleius’ story. Giulio Romano.
11:4 Cupid and Psyche with butterfly wings embracing wedded in
heaven. A Christianized version from the Priscilla catacombs.
11:5 The Coronation of the Virgin at her Assumption. The Pierpont
Morgan Library. Book of Hours in the Sarum Use. Fifteenth Century.
Morgan 105, fol. 21.
111:1 Plaque from the Ur Lyre with Ass Playing Harp, 2,500 B.C.
University Museum, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia.
111:2 Spanish Fresco with Ass Playing Harp, twelfth century, from
Chapter House of San Pedro de Arlanza. The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Cloisters Collection, 1931, New York.
IV:1 Rose Cordova and Don Cacaguate.
IV:2 Rose Lloyds.
PREFACE
Tales within Tales contains its own tale. One summer’s evening, the
Graduate Committee on Medieval Studies at the University of Colorado
became involved in a discussion of Apuleius, Isis, Black Virgins, and
Chaucer. Imagine that evening as like Marlowe holding forth upon the
Thames about the Congo - which turns, in Apocafyse Now, into the Ohio.
From that oral discussion this scribal book was born. We collected oral tales
for its final section, each tale, like that of "Cupid and Psyche," being told by a
woman. Our Committee had already worked on the influence of Terence on
medieval culture. Now we chose a second African, using these two great
writers concerning heterosexuality to see the classical Mediterranean’s
dimensions and contributions to medieval Europe and modern America.
Both Terence and Apuleius were from Mediterranean Africa, both
wrote about Greece, both gave their works Greek titles, both wrote in Latin,
both blended together law and literature. Terence of the second century
before Christ wrote Comedies about slaves and women who win, not lose.
From his work Dante took his title for the Commedia, a work in which there
are countless tales within tales, and Chaucer took the idea of a General
Prologue of dramatis personae who then interact with one another in their
tale-telling. Likewise Hrostwitha of Gandersheim took the ideas for her plays
about courageous and comic women hero Christian martyrs, and the
Wakefield Master in Yorkshire created his plays about nagging Mrs. Noah,
the woman on top, and about Mak the Trickster and his wife Gil hiding their
sheep, pretending it is a new-born child, as mirror-reversal to the Nativity
and the Annunciation to the Shepherds.
Apuleius, of the second century after Christ, likewise wrote about
women on top and slaves and even, though he wrote in official Latin, about
Language Freedom, rather than Official English, having one scene where a
Roman soldier orders a Greek farmer about and punishes him - though the
farmer could not understand the order, having only democratic, demotic
Tales within Tales /x
Greek, and not imperial, vulgar Latin. The works of Terence and Apuleius
were well-known to Augustine, yet another African, and in that mode,
likewise deeply affected western culture. The manuscripts of all three
authors, Terence, Apuleius, Augustine, were copied out and preserved for
use in Benedictine abbey scriptoria. Then Boccaccio, who so influenced
Chaucer and had been influenced by Dante, in his own hand copied out both
Terence’s plays, in Biblioteca Laurenziana 38.17, and Apuleius’ works, in
Biblioteca Laurenziana 54.32, in manuscripts to be found to this day in
Florence. It is generally assumed that the base text manuscript of the
Metamorphoseon or The Golden Ass> Biblioteca Laurenziana 68.2, is
eleventh-century and likely to have come from Monte Cassino. It itself states
it was in the possession of the Convent of San Marco. Another manuscript,
Laurenziana 29.2, which is twelfth-century and which is not considered
important in the catalogue, is in a decidedly ancient hand and has above its
lines a Renaissance gloss. A third, fourteenth-century, manuscript,
Laurenziana 54.32, spoken of above, is correctly noted by the Catalogue to be
in Boccaccio’s hand. The remaining manuscripts are generally fifteenth-
century Humanist ones and manifest Florence’s Renaissance fascination with
Apuleius and the Medici’s near monopoly of this text: Laurenziana 54.12;
54.13; 54.14 (the Catalogue being in error in stating this manuscript as
thirteenth century); 54.24; 84.24 (this manuscript having fine Pythagorean
mathematical diagrams); 24. Sinistra 11. Most of these manuscripts end, as
do those of Terence, with "FELIC1TER."
In a sense, this volume of essays is upon Apuleius and Chaucer.
Chaucer was far more deeply influenced by Boccaccio than he ever
acknowledged (he only acknowledged Boccaccio’s friend, Petrarch). Through
Boccaccio, Chaucer was likewise deeply influenced by Apuleius, while there
was as well a vestigial medieval presence of Apuleian materials, such as Nigel
Wireker’s Speculum Stultorum, which Chaucer cites in the "Nuns* Priest’s
Tale." Nigel Wireker was the friend of Thomas Becket and John of Salisbury.
An ass playing the harp is sculpted on a capital in the crypt of Canterbury
Cathedral where Thomas’ body originally was enshrined. [Stop Press! After
the completion of our book, we consulted the Louvain and Brepols
publication of the Latin Fathers on CD-ROM disk, the CETEDOC Library
of Christian Latin Texts, or CLCLT for short. One can ask it how many times
Terence and Apuleius were cited by the Church Fathers, and the answer is
very many times, 86 for Terence, 71 for Apuleius. Particularly of interest is
that Apuleius is a favorite author for, of all people, John of Salisbury. Is it
possible that John and Nigel shared a copy at Canterbury of the Golden Ass
and that that manuscript also influenced the crypt capital sculptures?]
There is magic in these works - and revolutionary freedom. Apuleius
weds law, his own calling, to literature. He sees criminality as caused by