Apuleius and the Art of Narration

Abstract

Anyone who wants to understand the very considerable art which Apuleius displays in narrating the stories of the Metamorphoses must naturally first describe the various modes of narration which he employs. Such description can scarcely be photographic: it requires its own language of categories and concepts – a language which Apuleius might, or might not, have understood. A valuable modern addition to the vocabulary has been the concept of ‘Point of View’: this concept is used to categorize modes of narration according to the relationship which they set up between reader, narrator and the narrated. The narrator may be more or less involved in the events he narrates; he may know everything about them, or very little; he may relate them as present or as past. The reader may be told much or little of what the narrator knows; he may be made to view the story from the point of view of the narrator, of one of the characters, or even, I suppose, ‘objectively’. This whole sort of categorization has been dear to many authors and critics of this century, but has only recently been taken up by critics of the ancient novels: Chariton, Xenophon, Achilles 1971 (Hägg); Petronius 1973 (Beck); Apuleius 1972 (W. S. Smith), 1978 (van der Paardt).