Narrative Techniques in Apuleius' "Golden Ass"Author(s): James T. SvendsenSource: Pacific Coast Philology, Vol. 18, No. 1/2 (Nov., 1983), pp. 23-29Published by: Pacific Ancient and Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1316637 .Accessed: 13/05/2011 10:34

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NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES IN APULEIUS' GOLDEN ASS

James T. Svendsen

RECENT CRITICISM OF APULEIUS' serio-comic romance emphasizes the artistic integrity, the repeated themes and motifs and the narrative patterns which underly and unify the disparate episodes of the novel. In several re- spects, however, Apuleius' narrative techniques are highly traditional and have analogues not only in earlier Greek and Roman fiction but even in the Homeric epics themselves. Homer and Apuleius mark the alpha and omega of the classical narrative, and this paper will focus first on the comparable narrative strategies, then summarize the distinctive features of the Metamor- phoses, better know as The Golden Ass. Though Apuleius, like Petronius, consciously "nods" to Homer (cf. 6.23-24 especially and 1.5, 3.1, 6.18 and 7.5) and literary parody is one of his basic stylistic devices, the Metamorphoses is far less a literary pastiche than the Satyricon, and Apuleius' fabula graecanica (1.1) is far more than a Homeric adaptation. Beyond the scope of this essay are the similarities in content and atmosphere to the Homeric Odyssey: each in a way is a Bildungsroman focused on the education (or re-education) of the protagonist; each involves a mythic voyage into the unknown; each involves beneficent and malevolent divinities; each protagonist encounters females who help or hinder his quest. Rather than emphasize either the literary sources or the similarities in content or atmosphere in perhaps the two greatest ro- mances of antiquity, this paper will restrict itself to narrative technique, to Apuleius' manipulation and arrangement of his traditional materials.

The first and perhaps most obvious narrative strategy evident is the use of the interpolated (or inserted) tale-within-a-tale. 1 The Homeric Odyssey particularly proceeds by tales told to Telemachos, the means by which he learns of his father, his world and the heroic code, tales told to Odysseus, the means by which he recapitulates his past and reconstructs his world, and the tales (both true and false) which our artful protagonist himself relates. Similarly, Apuleius' narrative is periodically punctuated by various lepidae fabulae to which he alludes in his poem (1.1) No sooner does the reader meet the protagonist Lucius than the entire narrative is disrupted by the program- matic Tale of Aristomenes ("Mr. Best Advice"), a story which introduces Lucius (and the reader) to the mysterious world of Thessaly and the themes of magic, curiosity, metamorphosis and death. In Books II-IV the tales of Thelyphron, Diophanes and the three robber tales both horrify and titillate the

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reader with their macabre content and mannered form. Basic to each narrative is the "mirroring" device, the reflection, refraction and distillation of themes, motifs and characters in the outer narrative by an extended tale. Each new protagonist of the Odyssey (e.g. Agamemnon, Menelaos, Hephaistos) becomes an alter ego or "mirror" of the main protagonist, and his character is estab- lished, developed and "rounded" by comparison and contrast. In the Meta- morphoses the strategy is exploited fully in the Tale of Cupid and Psyche, the complex centerpiece added by Apuleius to his Greek original:

The story which emerges is at once simple and contrived, at once moving and amusing. But it is not told merely as a story for its own sake. Viewed as the projection of Lucius' career into the world of myth, the history of Psyche presents a vision of the human soul alienated from its true reality, yet searching unceasingly for it and being eventually admitted to it by initiation into the mysteries. It is in this sense that Apuleius can be said to have shaped the tale into a Platonist-Isiac myth.2

A second obvious characteristic of both the Homeric poems and the Meta- morphoses form of presentation:

In the Iliad and Odyssey the stories are presented partly in dramatic form, the poet's characters speaking in their own persons, and element of pure narrative being reduced accordingly. ... In fact, about half of the total extent of the Iliad and Odyssey consists of direct speech of the participants. Seldom in either are there more than fifty continuous lines of uninterrupted narrative.3

In the Odyssey the story consistently unfolds through conversations in do- mestic settings, through soliloquies (cf. 5.299-312 and 408-423) and through Odysseus' first-person narration of his recent adventures to the Phaeacians. The Metamorphoses too exhibits a highly dramatic narrative, and H. G. Mason has noted Apuleius' conscious debt to drama, particularly to mime and Euri- pidean tragedy.4 Of particular interest is the manner in which "minor" charac- ters are etched economically yet effectively through speech (e.g. Byrrhena's ambiguous concern [2.5] and Photis' with [2.7]). What each narrative gains by such a strategy, of course, is immediacy, individuation and authenticity.

Another strategy contributing variation, depth and distance to the narra- tive is the extended descriptive digression or ekphrasis. 5 Probably the most famous examples of the insertion of diversionary material are the description of Achilles' shield at Iliad 18.478ff. and the origin of Odysseus' scar at Odyssey 19.390ff. This stylistic technique, especially the description of artistic repre- sentations, was advanced and elaborated by the Alexandrians (and assid- uously imitated, of course, by Catullus, Vergil and Petronius) by linking the representation with the poetic theme. In Greek romance the topos is exploited at the beginning of Achilles Tatius' novel with the description of Europa and the Bull, and the technique is extended to its fullest in Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, where the entire narrative develops from a pictorial representation Like Homer, Apuleius uses the device in two ways: 1) an extended develop-

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ment of a physical element or feature(e.g. Photis' hair at 2.8-9) thereby adding emphasis, depth and symbolic significance; and 2) an elaborate excursus on actual artwork or artistic expressions. In Book II, for example, Lucius tours Byrrhena's garden and stops mesmerized before the statuary depicting Act- aeon's act of voyeurism and metamorphosis into a stag (2.40 The excursus, however, is by no means otiose and mere Hellenistic decoration but functions, like the several tales, as a warning to Lucius against curiositas and meddling with magic (and women). Similarly, the ekphraseis on the Judgment of Paris (10.30-33) arises directly from the mimetic prelude to the sexual encounter between Lucius-as-ass and the evil matrona, and it too recapitulates themes and motifs at a crucial point in the narrative.

Perhaps characteristic of any good narrative, both narratives employ fore- shadowing. In the Odyssey, of course, Menelaos' tale of his adventures and successful homecoming and the pattern of allusions to Agamemnon's rather unsuccessful return both anticipate Odysseus' return. Similarly, the Tale of Aphrodite, a "Hellenistic" comedy of adultery and revenge in Book VIII, foreshadows his eventual triumph over and revenge upon the suitors. In Apuleius stories and ekphraseis consistently anticipate future events; the early tales and artistic digressions are warnings against dabbling in sex and magic and anticipate the actual pattern of Lucius' fall, punishment and metamor- phosis. In the Odyssey it is not only what the protagonist sees (e.g. Telemachos' vision of peace and prosperity at Pylos and Sparta) but also what he hears (tales of Odysseus, fathers and sons, justice and homecoming) that point to his own fate and future experience. In Apuleius, of course, The Cupid and Psyche Tale has both a summarizing and anticipatory function for the frame narra- tive. Ironically the story not only anticipates the captive girl Charite's release and reunion with her faithful lover, but it is equally relevant to the asinine listener whose life is also recapitulated and anticipated.

Beyond the preceding general characteristics are three specific techniques of arrangement: juxtaposition or montage, ring composition and the arrange- ment of elements in triads or tricola. In the Odyssey, for example, Homer not accidentally juxtaposes the return of Menelaos in Book IV with the audience's first view of the stranded and weeping Odysseus in Book V. The elaborate and detailed description of the supercivilized Phaeacians in Books VI-VIII is simi- larly sharpened by contrast to the Cyclops in Book IX. In like manner Apuleius' narrative is characterized by structural parataxis, a form of montage or narrative disruption strikingly evident throughout. The dizzying arrange- ment of episodes and tales involving adulterous wives, revenge and death in Books IX-X, for example, is a mystifying set of mirrors (partly comic and partly tragic) arranged to titillate and at the same time to underline the sense of catastrophe and unredeemed evil. The "modernity" of Apuleius, according to Henry Ebel, "stems precisely from the free and musical structuring that the oral/rhetorical tradition makes possible, a form of experience that we ourselves are most likely to encounter in cinema." 6 In Homer as well as in Apuleius the editorial process results in a style that is both repetitive and disjunctive and, like the film editor in the cinema, both authors attain special effects

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through montage and the callida iunctura. More complicated than but related to juxtaposition is the use of the framed

sequence or ring-composition. Whether or not one is persuaded by Cedric Whitman's perception that the entire Iliad is one vast hysteron proteron or not, 7 there seems general consensus that ring-composition is an important structural device for the orally composing poet:

In Homer ring-composition figures prominently as a device for framing a speech, a scene, a book, and even to frame the poem, as Books 1 and 24 of the Iliad thematically and structurally balance each other. Scholars have seen in this technique the verbal expression of the symmetries of Geometric art, or the formal conveniences for structuring a long poem.8

Although not dictated by the demands of the oral-formulaic style and tradi- tion, Apuleius' narrative is also characterized by the frame sequence. In the opening books he has carefully interwoven events to center and focus the "framed," interpolated tale described earlier:

-1.1-2 Frame (outer narrative: daybreak) r-1.3-4 Lead-in (Lucius and the Sceptic)

1.5-19 Tale of Aristomenes -1.20 Lead-out (Lucius and the Sceptic)

-1.21-26 Frame (outer narrative; nightfall)

-2.1-18 Frame (dawn) 2.19-20 Lead-in (Lucius and Byrrhena) 2.21-30 Thelyphron's Tale 2.31 Lead-out (Lucius and Byrrhena)

-2.32 Frame (nightfall)

On the larger level the entire narrative, of course, is deliberatively focused on the elaborate centerpiece (mid-IV-mid-VI), the Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Alexander Scobie, following in Whitman's geometric footsteps, has sche- matized the entire novel as a series of framed sequences and argued that Apuleius' method of composition is not as "desultory" (desultoriae scientiae stilo, 1.1) as might be deduced from his mannered proem.9 Though the con- tent and tone may vary enormously, the manner of composition and arrange- ment of episode and tale reflect detailed concern and almost mathematical precision.

Consistent with this mathematical precision is the insistent occurrence of events, characters and stories in triads or groups of three. In Homer, of course, the original embassy to Achilles was expanded from duo to a trio, Demodocus sings three songs in Book VIII, and Odysseus himself tends to tell his story in sequences of three. But what appears merely one method of ar- rangement in Homer becomes a veritable obsession in the Apuleian narrative. Whether the origin lies deeply rooted in the Indo-European tricolon, in Py- thagorean numerology or in Pliny's scholastica lex, characters (robbers, daugh- ters etc.) prayers, initiations and especially tales (the three robber tales in

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Narrative Techniques in Apuleius' Golden Ass

Book IV, the three tales of adultery in Book IX) all occur in threes. Then too the overall movement of both Odyssey and Metamorphoses falls into a tri- partite division:

Odyssey Metamorphosis I Books I-IV Telemacheia I Books I-III Warnings and Fall

II Books V-XII Odysseus in II Books IV-X Punishment and Wonderland Road of Trials

III Books XIII-XXIV Return III Book XI Metamorphosis and of the Hero Apologia Isidis

Is Apuleius' narrative technique totally traditional or is there anything innovative or unique to the Metamorphoses? In their analysis of the modern novel theorists have devoted considerable energy to characterizing the "point of view" chosen by the author. Hagg defines it as the "standpoint from which the audience is made to view the action and characters of the romance."10 and Franz Stanzel has attempted to distinguish between the "auktoriale," "per- sonale," and "Ich-Roman." 11 The primary innoviation of Apuleius is not, however, merely his choice of the "I perspective" (Achilles Tatius' novel was also written in the first person) but the effort devoted to maintaining the limited perspective of the "experiencing" narrator. Van Gorp defines the out- standing feature of the picaresque narrative style in the following fashion: "the picaros relate their various experiencess from the ambiguous point of view of subsequent omniscience and direct experience." 12 Though the question of the relationship of the Metamorphoses to subsequent fiction remains tangen- tial to this paper, it does focus precisely on the experiencing narrator Apuleius maintains from 1.2 through Book X. In a characteristically modern way, how- ever, Apuleius has complicated the "experiencing self' by an "authorial" proem and an autobiographical (cf. the sphragis i la Hitchcock at 11.27) and retrospective analysis in Book XI. What Apuleius gains by the choice of the first person, as all theorists agree, is authenticity and credibility. Apuleius' dubious "wonder romance," a marvelous adventure tale as old as the Odyssey, becomes invested with a "realistic" atmosphere through Apuleius' manipu- lation of his materials and point of view.

Apuleius' narrative style may also be linked with a subgenre of "spatial form" 13 narratives Joseph Frank has identified in modern art and literature. The employment of diversionary materials, a consciously contrived and com- plex style, the sacrifice of temporal progression and forward movement, unity through repeated themes, motifs and symbols are techniques Frank associates with the modern novel, and all are evidenced in the Metamorphoses. The concept of spatial form also bears on the logic of the problematic, abrupt conclusion to the Metamorphoses. While the usual ending of such narratives is "open," very often an arbitrary stopping, Apuleius' ending is definitely "closed," but an abrupt, almost arbitrary, break in the endless cycle of evil presented in the previous ten books. Like many spatial form narratives, how- ever, the disparity between the final book and the preceding episodes forces

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a re-reading (Frank's "retrogressive assimilation") of the earlier material; The reader is thrust once more into the story and forced to correlate and integrate the narrative's seemingly discontinuous sections. Apuleius' Metamor- phoses has always proved elusive when subjected to the question of genre. Yet the problem posed by its inclusiveness seems less problematic to the reader of the modern novel, especially novels of spatial form, for the concept provides a useful framework for the exploration of the novel's narrative structure.

Lastly, inclusiveness perhaps best captures a narrative at once so entertain- ing and so alienating. Marie-Louise von Franz has divided the novel into two narratives, an outer narrative relating the adventures of Lucius, and an inner narrative of tales and images to be interpreted as dreams.14 Though von Franz' admittedly Jungian approach will not persuade every reader, her analysis of a double narrative and a double protagonist (Lucius and his shadows) reflects accurately the total inclusiveness characteristic of the novel's structure: at once amusing and totally serious, at once simple folktale, psychological paradigm, Platonic allegory and Isiac apology, at once totally superficial and mannered and yet reflecting man's deepest individual and psychological needs. In the last result what characterizes (perhaps uniquely) this narrative are the strategies and techniques devoted to depicting an individual ego, a psyche (with its dreamworld and its nightmares) and a particular and unique experience of con- version, a radical change in personality. Festugiere and Dodds have docu- mented certain deep-seated psychological and cultural changes beginning in late antiquity, s5 and Apuleius, like the sensitive artist he was, fashioned a narrative deeply rooted in the mythic past and traditional narrative devices but also anticipating the future, a narrative not unlike The Confessions of St. Augustine.

University of Utah

Notes

1. For analysis of the inserted tales see James Tatum. "The Tales of Apuleius' Metamorphoses," TAPA, 100 (1969), 487-528; W. Nethercut, "Apuleius' Metamorphoses: The Journey," Agon, 3 (1969), 97-134; and H. Ebel, "Apuleius and the Present Time," Arethusa, 3(1970), 155-76. Cf. G.

N. Sandy, "Petronius and the Tradition of the Interpolated Narrative," Trans. of Am. Philol. Assn. 101 (1970) 463-476.

2. P. G. Walsh, The Roman Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970), p. 223.

3. W. A. Camps, An Introduction to Homer (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980), p. 17.

4. H. G. Mason, "Fabula Graecanica: Apuleius and his Greek Sources," in Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass, edd. B. L. Hjmans Jr. and R. Th. van der Paardt (Groningen: Dikstra Niemeyer, 1978), esp. 10-12.

5. On Homeric digressions see Norman Austin, "The Function of Digres- sions in the Iliad," GRBS, 7CI966) 295-312

6. H. Ebel, After Dionysus (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1972), p. 49

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Narrative Techniques in Apuleius' Golden Ass 29

7. C. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958).

8. Norman Austin, Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer's Odyssey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 131.

9. Alexander Scobie, "The Structure of Apuleius' Metamorphoses," in Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass, op. cit. pp. 43-63.

10. Tomas Hagg, Narrative Technique in Ancient Greek Romances (Stock- holm 1971), p. 113,n.3.

11. Franz Stanzel, Typische Formen des Romans (Gottingen 1964) p. 16. 12. H. van Gorp, "Pikareske vertelstructuren?" Raam 104 (September

1974), p. 123. See also R. Th. van der Paardt, "The Unmasked 'I', " Mne- mosyne 34 (1981), 96-106.

13. Joseph Frank, "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," Sewanee Review 53 (1945), pp. 221-240, 433-56, 643-53; rpt. in The Widening Gyre (Bloom- ington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 3-62.

14. Marie-Louise von Franz, A Psychological Interpretation of the Golden Ass (Zurich: Spring Publications, 1970).

15. Andre-Jean Festugiere, Personal Religion among the Greeks (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1954) and E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970).