OUP (2013) h/b 293pp £60 (ISBN 9780199602681)
This book is a collection of essays on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses published by H. over the past twenty years. Individually, they (together with other publications by H.) have already made a major contribution to the studies on this novel. Together, they offer a multiplicity of views on the novel and show the emergence, in the course of time, of one clear point of view in H.’s mind: the aim of the Metamorphoses is literary entertainment, ‘achieved not only through salacious and amusing content and clever narrative structure but also through subtle intertextual interactions with a range of literary and sub-literary traditions in both Latin and Greek, suitably adapted for a low-life and sensationalist novelistic context’ (p. 242).
No summary of contents can be clearer than the one given by the author in the introduction, where he contextualises every essay in terms of ideas that generated it, scholarship he was drawing on, and success enjoyed in the scholarly community. The hindsight allows the author a lucid opinion on his own material and its influence. The first part of the book deals with some general features. The introduction and chapter 1 are most useful tools to orientate oneself in the history of scholarship. Some chapters are self-standing and look at the language (ch. 2), at the influence of Milesian Tales in terms of narrative framework and not just of contents (ch. 3), and at the prologue, with the ingenious identification of the book itself as the speaker (ch. 4). The other chapters (5, 6, 7) form a coherent picture of the role of religion in the novel as satirical. The second part of the book is occupied by sound textual analysis, where H. x-rays many passages and traces their models (mainly epic ones), demonstrating Apuleius’ learned imitation of illustrious predecessors and their adaptation in a lower context for the sake of entertainment. The Aeneid stands out as a major intertext, together with Homer, the Odyssey in particular. The narrative of Cupid and Psyche is given special consideration (chapters 10, 12, 15). H.’s arguments are no-nonsense and presented clearly throughout.
Specialists will already know of H.’s contributions, but will benefit from looking at them diachronically as moments of the development of bigger lines of thought. Students of Classics will find in this book many useful examples of the sophistication of the Metamorphoses and obtain a good understanding of the history of its scholarship.
Nicolò D’Alconzo—Swansea University