The Protean Ass provides the most comprehensive account (in any language) of the reception of The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses) of Apuleius, the only work of Latin prose fiction worthy of the name of 'novel' to survive intact from the ancient world. Apuleius' second-century account of the curious young man who is changed into a donkey following an affair with a witch's slave-girl, and undergoes a series of adventures (involving robbery, adultery, buggery, and bestiality) before a divine vision transforms him into a disciple of the goddess Isis, has delighted, perplexed, and inspired readers as diverse as St Augustine, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. Robert H. F. Carver traces readers' responses to the novel from the third to the seventeenth centuries in North Africa, Italy, France, Germany, and England
| ISBN: | 9780199217861 |
| Publication date: | 6th December 2007 |
| Author: | Robert H F Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, Department of English Studies, University of Durham Carver |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 568 pages |
| Series: | Oxford Classical Monographs |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval Literary studies: general |