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In ancient Rome, where literacy was limited and speech was the main medium used to communicate status and identity face-to-face in daily life, an education in rhetoric was a valuable form of cultural capital and a key signifier of elite male identity. To lose the ability to speak would have caused one to be viewed as no longer elite, no longer a man, and perhaps even no longer human. We see such a fantasy horror story played out in the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, written by Roman North African author, orator, and philosopher Apuleius of Madauros—the only novel in Latin to survive in its entirety from antiquity. In the novel’s first-person narrative as well as its famous inset tales ...
The protagonists of the ancient novels wandered or were carried off to distant lands, from Italy in the west to Persia in the east and Ethiopia in the south; the authors themselves came, or pretended to come, from remote places such as Aphrodisia and Phoenicia; and the novelistic form had antecedents in a host of classical genres. These intersections are explored in this volume. Papers in the first section discuss “mapping the world in the novels.” The second part looks at the dialogical imagination, and the conversation between fiction and history in the novels. Section 3 looks at the way ancient fiction has been transmitted and received. Space, as the locus of cultural interaction and exchange, is the topic of the fourth part. The fifth and final section is devoted to character and emotion, and how these are perceived or constructed in ancient fiction. Overall, a rich picture is offered of the many spatial and cultural dimensions in a variety of ancient fictional genres.
This book differs from previous studies in its scope, its insistence on a variety of approaches, its emphasis on the importance of genre, and its argument that the place of the literary tradition progresses through the book. This is the first attempt to link Apuleius' allusive practices with a consideration of the emergence of the novel and the consequent tensions in generic form. The chapters on Charite, the Phaedraesque stepmother, and Isis represent experimental new directions for the interpretation of Apuleius and literary influence.
This book studies one of the few novels from the Roman Empire, Apuleius' Metamorphoses or Golden Ass. Harrison shows that this work is one of remarkable literary complexity. The volume traces some of the history of the novel's criticism and offers a detailed analysis of its key sections and issues.
This volume comprises the revised versions of selected papers read at the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (Groningen, July 2000). The papers cover a wide range of scholarly issues that were prominent in the programme of the conference, and feature the most recent approaches to research on the ancient novel. The essays combine judicious use of literary theory with traditional scholarship, and examine the ancient novels and related texts, such as Oriental tales and Christian narrative, both in their larger, literary, cultural and social context, and as sources of inspiration for Byzantine and modern fiction. This book is important not only for classicists and literary historians, but also for a general public of those interested in narrative fiction.
This new monograph on Apuleius' Isis Book not only brings together the striking diversity of opinions that continues to enliven the discussion about Book Eleven, but also sets new trends in reading the narrative in its literary, religious, archaeological and cultural context. Through a variety of approaches, including religious studies (ancient mystery cult), textual criticism, literary analysis, Greek philosophy, and archaeology, the volume sheds new light on important aspects of Book XI, such as the relation with Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride; aspects of Lucius’ multifarious physical self-presentation as an Isiac convert; aspects of style and language (wordplay), textual problems in relation to problems of interpretation; the role of Providence and Platonic philosophy, and numerous metaliterary and intertextual aspects.
This book demonstrates and analyzes patterns in the response of the Imperial Roman state to local resistance, focusing on decisions made within military and administrative organizations during the Principate. Through a thorough investigation of the official Roman approach towards local revolt, author Gil Gambash answers significant questions that, until now, have produced conflicting explanations in the literature: Was Rome’s rule of its empire mostly based on oppressive measures, or on the willing cooperation of local populations? To what extent did Roman decisions and actions indicate a dedication towards stability in the provinces? And to what degree were Roman interests pursued at the ...
This volume examines Apuleius’ comic donkey novel, The Golden Ass, within the context of the popular beliefs and Jewish and Christian writings that were part of the intellectual culture of his own day in 2nd century C.E. North Africa, a culture which can also be glimpsed in some early Arabic writings. The novel was written against a cultural and religious background in which the donkey had various connotations, both positive and negative, but tended to be admired in Jewish, Christian, and later, in Muslim writings. Smith explores the influence of such popular opinions on The Golden Ass and how Apuleius presented Isis and Osiris as desirable alternatives to the claims of both Christianity a...
"'Lyric' in contemporary literary criticism is a term as elusive as it is suggestive. It exists both as an adjective, expressing a poetic quality, and as a noun denoting a poetic mode, and both are notoriously difficult to define. It is this protean quality that has allowed 'lyric' to become a powerful creative stimulus for both poets and theorists. A foundational period for today's sense of 'lyric' was the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century"--