Playing with Elegy: Tales of Lovers in Books 1 and 2 of Apuleius' Metamorphoses

Abstract

In the prologue to the Metamorphoses, Apuleius indicates that his novel will be a literary game, involving changes of voice and style in a manner best described as that of a “circus rider” (desultoriae scientiae stilo, Met. 1,1). His overt bid for the reader’s attention at the beginning of the work (lector intende, Met. 1,1) alerts his audience to the highly allusive nature of the text, and hints that, in order to “be delighted” (laetaberis, Met. 1,1), one must pay attention to the interweavings of language, style, and, allusion within the narrative. In this complex interplay of styles and genres, a direct relationship between Apuleius’ narrative and the language and conventions of Latin love elegy can be distinguished. The elegiac figures of the lover (amator), the mistress (domina), and the witch (saga) appear numerous times within the Metamorphoses and are often combined or conflated to create a sort of literary “who’s who” game within the text of the novel. An examination of the manipulation of elegiac roles within the narrative reveals a high degree of literary self-consciousness and gives a glimpse of the author at play with the inherited literary tradition.

Amanda G. Mathis earned her B.A. in Latin and Greek from Baylor University in 2002; she also holds a master's degree in Greek from the University of Georgia at Athens (2004), where she served for two years as editorial assistant of the journal Literary Imagination. She is currently a Ph.D. student in her fourth year of study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is beginning research on a dissertation on Apollonius of Rhodes. Her interests include Greek tragedy, Hellenistic poetry, Roman elegy, and the literature of the Second Sophistic period.