Ambages Reciprocae: Reviewing Apuleius' Metamorphoses

Abstract

Any critical investigation of Apuleius' Metamorphoses needs to come to terms with the basic problem of structural and thematic design. If there is any consensus among modern scholars it is that this is no easy task: ‘[It] is so varied a work that it resists an easy reading’; ‘we are still none the wiser as to why [Apuleius] should have written the Metamorphoses as he did’; ‘there is … little agreement as to whether the Golden Ass is “a collection of breezy tales” or a moral fable’. While few now would opt for an unqualified version of the former of these last-mentioned alternatives, the difficulty of reconciling comic and serious, entertaining and instructive, profane and sacred remains. For some it is a ‘deeply religious work’; others see it more as a Platonist fable; others again have sought to identify unifying themes such as curiositas (‘curiosity’) or metamorphosis. The very nature of this critical endeavour indicates the prevailing perception: the Metamorphoses is a collection of tales and incidents so diverse in nature that their presence in the same book gives it the appearance of a mismatched patchwork quilt, and yet somewhere beneath it all there is a key whose discovery will enable the discerning reader to achieve a vision of its overall unity.