THEMES:
-understanding femininity
- sexuality and animal sex
-treatment of animals
- egyptian gods vs roman gods
IRONY: begins by seducing women, ends up worshipping women
Learning lessons
Importance/significance of Cupid & Psyche.
Attitudes towards Christianity p155 in this edition – reference to one God.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
BOOK 1
Aristomenes tells Lucius of his tale with Socrates, Meroe & Panthia. Lucius goes to stay with Milo
BOOK 2
Lucius meets up with Byrrhena (his aunt) & is warned about Pamphile (Milo’s Wife) shags Photis, the maid, Milo’s tale and Thelyphron’s tale
BOOK 3
Lucius is set up in a mock-trial for the God of Laughter. Photis confesses. Lucius turns into an ass.
BOOK 4
Lucius is kidnapped by robbers. robbers tell tales and bring back Charite (young girl) who they stole from her wedding. Old woman tells tale of cupid and psyche to comfort her.
Book 5
Cupid and psyche continued…
Book 6
Cupid and Psyche still continued…
Back to robbers. Lucius attempts to escape, old woman grabs him, girl comes to his rescue and they both gallop away. Recaptured.
BOOK 7
Charite’s hubby, Tleptolomous (disguised as a robber) comes to rescue her (they were wanting to kill Lucius and sew Charite up inside him and leave her to die). Lucius and charite saved. lucius set fere as reward. Stableman’s wife steals him and abuses him
Book 8
Charite is dead. Thrasyllus (jealous ex) kills tleptolomous in a hunting ‘accident’. Tlep goes to charite in a dream, tells her what hapened. she pokes Thras’ eyes out, runs to hubby’s grave and kills herself. Thras wakes up, finds out what happened and starves himself to death. Slaves flee and take lucius with them. Stop @ a village and hear a story about a slave who got above his station. Lucius is auctioned off to a bunch of trannies. Takes it up the arse p143. Gay scene p145. They go to stay with some rich guy.
BOOK 9
Next story at in inn is of a cuckold (jars) lucius is up for sale (again) bought buy a miller and his old harridan of a wife. lucius exposes the wife’s lover. miller serves her with a divorce notice. wife gets a ghost to kill him. miller found hung. lucius sold. again. to a poor market gardener. go to posh guy’s house. posh guy dies. gardener leaves, beats up soldier who accosts him for lucius, goes into hiding, lucius gives him away. he gets locked up.
BOOK 10
Lucius now belongs to the soldier. soldier has 2 sons. stepmum *likes* son. he isn’t interested. gets slave to poison him. her own son comes back and drinks the poison. she accuses/blames her stepson because ‘she wouldn’t let him rape her’. big trial. all say guilty. stepson’s tutor leaps to his defence. he sold slave fake poison (narcotic) because he was suss of him. woman exiled, slave crucified, lucius sold AGAIN to 2 cooks. master gets lucius to eat with him because he is entertaining. woman hires lucius for sex from slave. slave tells master. master finds it funny and wants lucius to ‘perform’ in public with a whore. lucius – anti-the whore chosen and scarpers. lucius purifies himself and pleads with isis to return him to his normal shape. she does and he becomes her servant (priest)
FIN.
ELEMENTS:FAIRYTALE AND OTHERWISE
* not fable – can’t speak to, or understand animals while his is in ass form
- book 7
* biblical and well… not biblical, but religious – isis = egyptian goddess – mother of goddesses
book 10 – appears before lucius and all her symbols- wheat etc.
- Cupid & psyche
- recurring theme: Sex & curiosity = BAD
Metamorphosis
Magic
ARTISTIC AMBITION
Born 125 AD, North Africa
Sent to Carthage (roman north africa)
Then to athens
was a priest in carthage
success @ public speaking – road to fame
purpose – to entertain
Quote: give me your ear, reader: you will enjoy yourself. Book 1
narrative is bulked out by stories heard by lucius both before and after his metamorphosis (books 1-10: anecdotes make up 60% of the book)
Lucius is a mask for the author himself
Book 11 seems out of place and not really attached very well. very serious & anti-climactic. what was the purpose of this?
Show that egyptian gods are better than roman gods.
not written as a social history but is broadly realistic. eg large landowners with retainers etc.
World presented = grim. motivated by deceit, spite, greed and lust.
Original title = metamorphosis ‘transformations’ – a tale of changes of shape and vicissitudes (changes – esp of fortune) of fortune shows an affinity to ovid’s poem of the same name
lucius = ‘golden ass’ = ironic. to Isis, in her cult, the ass (seth -Typhon) is a hateful beast who killed her husband, Osiris
The reader makes moral judgements on lucius behalf – he lives it, we learn from it.
content/style – some things are dragged out for entertainment eg the woman who tried to poison her stepsson – why didn’t the doctor tell the truth straight away – why let the trial drag out for so long first? ENTERTAINMENT why not found out what a a thief? ENTERTAINMENT
THEMES
CURIOSITY – getting him into trouble continually
SEX – true love – cupid and psyche
estranged love – charite & tleptolomus
lust – lucius and photis
homosexuality – the queens
revenge – miller raping his wife’s lover (sodomy)
desire – woman + lucius
urge – man + lucius
spectacle – lucius & prostitute
perverse – stepmum/stepson
infidelity – miller & old man with jars.
MAGIC
- city = renown for witchcraft which is what draws lucius there in the first place
- pamphile – witch
- meroe & panthia = witches
- witches seen to be bad
- Byrrhena’s friend, theylphron’s tale of spirits that stole his eyes/deformed him
WOMEN
wiches are al women and all mean. witches change their shape
women have a vendetta against men
women are not to be trusted
women (eg venus est) = vindictive
women will be unfaithful
BUT
women have the power – isis
charit/psyche/photis women are there to be seduced.#women will always prostitute themselves
women are immoral
METAMORPHOSIS
into an ass
from seducer of woman into worshipper of women
from posh (human) to trash/slave (ass)
people change in their views
MESSAGES
do not trust blindly
look before you leap
let not curiosity get the better of you
do not act before thinking of the concequences
people are not always what/who they seem to be
if someone CAN exploit you, they WILL
QUOTES:
BOOK 1
“Being in any case an all too eager student of the remarkable and miraculous, and remembering that i was now in the heart of Thessaly, renowned the whole world over as the cradle of magic arts and spells and that it was in this very city that my friend Aristomene’ story had begun” -p22
BOOK3
“officers of the court led me like some sort of sacrificial victim out across the stage and placed me in the middle of the orchestra” p41 (he was a sacrifice to the god of laughter – his sacrifice was his dignity, not his life)
“nothing he could say or do could alleviate my feeling of outrage at the indicnity i had suffered so feeply had it sunk into my heart” p45 (the first of many)
“the only redeeming feature of this catastrophic transformation was that my natural endowment had grown too”
BOOK 4
RE: psyche: “I’ll see to it that she regrets this beauty of hers to which she hwas no right ” p73
BOOK 5
” you aren’t really rich if nobody knows you are” (psyche’s sisters)
“gods and men alike will find it intolerable that you spread desire broadcast through the world, while you impose a bitter constraint on the love in your own family and deny it admission to your own public academy of gallantry” (ceres and juno defending cupid)
BOOK 6
pandora’s box type occurance – cupid says to psyche “poor wretch… you see how yet again curiosity has been your undoing” p104
BOOK 7
“the learned men of old… knew what they were talking about when they envisaged and portrayed Fortune as totally blind. It is invariably in the wicked and undeserving… that she bestows her favours. Her choices are never grounded on reason, indeed she goes out of her way to freqent the company of those she ought to avoid like the plague if she could see” p112
“as soon as she saw Haemus and heard what they were saying about pimps and brothels, she became elated and began laughing merrily. That, i felt, justified me in condemning the entire female sex, when i sw this girl who had pretended to be in love with her betrothed and to be pining for a chaste marriage, now delighted by the mention of a filthy sordid brothel. at that moment, the whole race of woman and the morals hung in the balance, with an ass holding the scales” p117
BOOK 8
“will you please our masters and bring relief to my exhausted loins” – man to lucius p145
“they brought back with them to share their dinner, a robust young peasant fully equipped in loin and groin…. the young man was stripped and laid on his back, and crowding around him they made repeated demands on his services with their loathesome mouths’ p145 (gay orgy)
BOOK 9
“speaking for myself, i am devoutly grateful to the ass that i once was, for it was he, when i was concealed under his hide and was buffeted by so many tribulations, who rendered me, no wiser, i must admit, but very widely informed” p154
Re Myrmex: “she, fickle like all women, acted in character and agreed to sell her honour for the accursed metal”
Book 10
“what pleased him most of all was that in me he had both a companion and a conveyance” p184
EMBEDDING
LUCIUS STORY = THE FRAME
1. ARISTOMENES – socrates tells of his ruination – aristomenes socrates, meroe and panthia
2. THELYPHRON (at Byrrhena’s ) p38 – dead man brought back to life tels what happened when Thelyphron went to sleep
3. PHOTIS – what happened with the goatskins
4. ROBBERS – their exploits
5. OLD WOMAN – tells the tale of cupid and psyche to charite
6. TLEPTOLOMUS (as Haemus) – tale of escape from soldiers etc. a ruse to save charite
7. SLAVES – tells story of charite’s death
8. OLD MAN / Serpent – tells tale to lure bait
9. SlAVE – woman has an affair with a slave 0 her hubby finds out, she kills herself and the kid and he kills the slave
10. ARETE & MYRMEX – the guy who leaves his sandals under the bed
11. AT AN INN – man with jars cuckolded
12. MILLER tells of his friend’s wife’s infidelity
13. LUCIUS tells the story – stepmum and stepson
14. A WHORE for lucius – finding the prostitute – also told by lucius
