This book traces the transmission and reception of one of the most influential novels in Western literature. The Golden Ass, the only ancient Roman novel to survive in its entirety, tells of a young man changed into an ass by magic and his bawdy adventures and narrow escapes before the goddess Isis changes him back again. Its centerpiece is the famous story of Cupid and Psyche. Julia Gaisser follows Apuleius' racy tale from antiquity through the sixteenth century, tracing its journey from roll to codex in fourth-century Rome, into the medieval library of Monte Cassino, into the hands of Italian humanists, into print, and, finally, over the Alps and into translation in Spanish, French, German, and English. She demonstrates that the novel's reception was linked with Apuleius' reputation as a philosopher and the persona he projected in his works. She relates Apuleius and the Golden Ass to a diverse cast of important literary and historical figures--including Augustine, Fulgentius, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Bessarion, Boiardo, and Beroaldo. Paying equal attention to the novel's transmission (how it survived) and its reception (how it was interpreted), she places the work in its many different historical contexts, examining its representation in art, literary imitation, allegory, scholarly commentary, and translation. The volume contains several appendixes, including an annotated list of the manuscripts of the Golden Ass.

This book is based on the author's Martin Classical Lectures at Oberlin College in 2000.

Second-century Roman writer Apuleius is best known for his Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, the only Roman novel that has survived to the present, but in his time he was known as, and claimed to be, a serious Platonic philosopher and rhetorician. Gaisser (emeritus, humanities, Bryn Mawr College) traces how the novel has been received and adapted down the centuries, identifying those elements of the racy novel, and of the author's thought and personality, that are responsible for the continued popularity of the work. She does not mention Robert Graves' rendition. The treatise is expanded from her spring 2000 Charles Beebe Martin Classical Lectures at Oberlin College. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Gaisser undertakes a comprehensive review of the fortunes of Apuleius' famous Latin novel about a man who is transformed into a donkey. She deploys with elegance and wit her research on the reception of this work from antiquity to the renaissance. Her attention to visual representations of Apuleian episodes is particularly welcome.

Donkeys get little enough respect, and to have been made the subject of a comic novel has done little for their reputation or for that of the author, Apuleius. Julia Haig Gaisser follows Apuleius and his donkey through a journey of many centuries--a journey as remarkable as the one recounted in the novel. She is wise, witty, learned, and sharp-eyed: the perfect guide.

This is a superb piece of scholarship that will energize the readership of the . It gathers and analyzes information that has been hidden for decades in a labyrinth of German, French, and Italian manuscripts, libraries, and journals. It will transform what kind of readings we can perform on the by providing a rich and accurate source for reception theory and intertextual studies.

Julia Haig Gaisser is Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of "Catullus, Catullus in English, Pierio Valeriano on the Ill Fortune of Learned Men", and "Catullus and His Renaissance Readers".

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Chapter 1: Apuleius: A Celebrity and His Image 1

Chapter 2: Exemplary Behavior: The Golden Ass from Late Antiquity to the Prehumanists 40

Chapter 3: A Mixed Reception: Interpreting and Illuminating the Golden Ass in the Fourteenth Century 76

Chapter 4: Making an Impression: From Florence to Rome and from Manuscript to Print 129

Chapter 5: Telling Tales: The Golden Ass in Ferrara and Mantua 173

Chapter 6: Apuleius Redux: Filippo Beroaldo Comments on the Golden Ass 197

Chapter 7: Speaking in Tongues: Translations of the Golden Ass 243

Conclusion: The Fortunes of Apuleius and the Golden Ass 296

Appendix 1: Ancient Readers of Apuleius (ca. 350 to ca. 550 AD) 300

Appendix 2: Manuscripts of Apuleius' Metamorphoses 302

Appendix 3: Extant Manuscripts of the Metamorphoses Written before 1400 309

Appendix 4: The Florentine Connection 311

Appendix 5: Adlington and His Sources for Met. 11.1 315

Bibliography 319

Index of Manuscripts 355

General Index 357