The Golden Ass

Apuleius, Apuleius Madaurensis

Clarendon Press, 1994 - Latin fiction - 277 pages

The Golden Ass by Apuleius is a unique, entertaining, and thoroughly readable Latin novel - the only work of fiction in Latin to have survived in entirety from antiquity. It tells the story of the hero Lucius, whose curiosity and fascination for sex and magic results in his transformation into an ass. After suffering a series of trials and humiliations, he is ultimately transformed back into human shape by the kindness of the Goddess Isis. Simultaneously a blend of romantic adventure, fable, and religious testament, the Golden Ass is one of the truly seminal books of European Literature, of intrinsic interest as a novel in its own right, and one of the earliest examples of the picaresque. It includes as its famous centrepiece the myth of Cupid and Psyche, the search of the human soul for union with the divine, and has been the inspiration for numerous creative works of literature and art since the Renaissance. This new translation is at once faithful to the meaning of the Latin, whilst reproducing all the exuberant gaiety of the original.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - JVioland - LibraryThing

Some tout this as a "great" book. I find it gross. Lewd, nude and crude with a primitive (if any) morality, I can't figure why anyone would consider it "great" other than a great disappointment.

Contents

• Abbreviations: ix
• Select Bibliography: 1
• Explanatory Notes: 241

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Golden Ass; Oxford world's classics; The world's classics
• Authors: Apuleius, Apuleius Madaurensis
• Editor: Patrick Gerard Walsh
• Translated by: Patrick Gerard Walsh, P. G. Walsh
• Contributors: Patrick Gerard Walsh, P. G. Walsh
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1994
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Feb 23, 2008
• ISBN: 0198149328, 9780198149323
• Length: 277 pages