The Golden Ass (Penguin Classics)
Author(s):
Apuleius
Label: Penguin Classics
Publisher(s):
Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Binding: Paperback
List Price: $14.00
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Written towards the end of the second century AD, "The Golden Ass" tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced to perform lewd 'human' tricks on stage - until the Goddess Isis finally breaks the spell and Lucius is initiated into her cult. Apuleius' enchanting story has inspired generations of writers such as Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats with its dazzling combination of allegory, satire, bawdiness and sheer exuberance, and remains the most continuously and accessibly amusing book to have survived from Classical antiquity.
Customer Reviews
A Complex and Entralling Work
Lucius Apuleius was one of the main representatives of North African Platonism during the second century (AD). He wrote works ranging from philosophy and medicine to poetry and rhetoric. Apuleius is best known for his remarkable collection of tales, The Golden Ass or Transformations. It is a playful satire containing the use of many different genres, much like one would find in the Mennepian satires of Petronius, Seneca, Fulgentius, or Macrobius. It is a complex and enthralling work in which interpretation is always open-ended. Apuleius' use of allegory, his exceptional talent for imagery, and his rhythmic and often poetic prose, make this text a challenge and a joy to read at the same time. The Golden Ass is definitely a masterpiece of Latin literature and can also argue of being the world's first novel.
Absolutely hilarious, a classic
Apuleius' great work is not read enough. As the story of an libertine who is unfortunately changed into an ass unfolds, we see a satire unfold that provides both entertainment and a biting commentary of life in the ancient Greco-Roman world. The book shows you the great distance between us moderns and the ancients, but what is likely to surprise you the most is precisely the opposite: those ways in which we are so similar.
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