The Shadow of an Ass: Philosophical Choice and Aesthetic Experience in Apuleius' Metamorphoses

Author:   Jeffrey P. Ulrich
Publisher:   The University of Michigan Press
ISBN:  

9780472133567


Pages:   384
Publication Date:   06 November 2024
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

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The Shadow of an Ass: Philosophical Choice and Aesthetic Experience in Apuleius' Metamorphoses


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Jeffrey Ulrich’s The Shadow of an Ass addresses fundamental questions about the reception and aesthetic experience of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, popularly known as The Golden Ass, by situating the novel in a contemporaneous literary and philosophical discourse emerging in the Second Sophistic. This unique Latin novel follows a man who is accidentally turned into a donkey because of his curiosity, viewing the world through a donkey’s eyes until he is returned to human form by the Egyptian goddess Isis. In the end, he chooses to become a cult initiate and priest instead of a debased and overindulgent ass. On the one hand, the novel encourages readers to take pleasure in the narrator’s experiences, as he relishes food, sex, and forbidden forms of knowledge. Simultaneously, it challenges readers to reconsider their participation in the story by exposing its donkey-narrator as a failed model of heroism and philosophical investigation. Ulrich interprets the Metamorphoses as a locus of philosophical inquiry, positioning the act of reading as a choice of how much to invest in this tale of pleasurable transformation and unanticipated conversion. The Shadow of an Ass further explores how Apuleius, as a North African philosopher translating an originally Greek novel into a Latin idiolect, transforms himself into an intermediary of Platonic philosophy for his Carthaginian audience. Situating the novel in a long history of philosophical and literary conversations, Ulrich suggests that the Metamorphoses anticipates much of the philosophical burlesque we tend to associate with early modern fiction, from Don Quixote to Lewis Carroll.

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Author:   Jeffrey P. Ulrich
Publisher:   The University of Michigan Press
Imprint:   The University of Michigan Press
ISBN:  

9780472133567


ISBN 10:   047213356
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   06 November 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

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Jeffrey P. Ulrich is Assistant Professor of Classics at Rutgers University.

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