The Golden Ass: Or Metamorphoses (100s) - Apuleius
100s - Ribaldry - fiction - novel - Latin - metamorphoses
The Golden Ass: Or Metamorphoses (100s) - Apuleius [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Description
Lucius Apuleius (ca 123/5 CE - ca 180 CE), an utterly Romanized Berber who described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian", is remembered most for his bawdy picaresque Latin novel the Metamorphoses, better known as The Golden Ass. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apuleius [Feb 2005]
The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, more commonly known as The Golden Ass, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. Written in the second century CE, it is a precursor to the literary genre of the episodic picaresque novel, in which Rabelais, Boccaccio, Voltaire, Defoe, and many others have followed. It is an imaginative, irreverent and amusing work that relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, a virile young man who is obsessed with magic. Finding himself in Thessaly, the "birthplace of magic", Lucius eagerly seeks an opportunity to see magic being performed. His over-enthusiasm leads to his accidental transformation into an ass. In this guise, Lucius, a member of the Roman country aristocracy, is forced to witness and share the misery of slaves and destitute freemen who are reduced, like Lucius, to being little more than beasts of burden by their exploitation at the hands of wealthy landowners. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass [Feb 2005]
Picaresque
The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresco", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") was a popular style of novel that originated in Spain and flourished in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term denotes a subgenre of usually satiric prose fiction and depicts in realistic, often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social degree living by his or her wits in a corrupt society.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picaresque_novel [Oct 2004]
Serious, yet sexually explicit
Yet despite its serious subject matter, the novel remains imaginative, witty, and often sexually explicit. Numerous amusing stories, many of which seem to be based on actual folk tales with their ordinary themes of simple-minded husbands, adulterous wives, and clever lovers, as well as the magical transformations that characterize the entire novel, are included within the main narrative. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass [Feb 2005]