Classics and the Western Canon discussion

May -- or may not -- be relevant to your reading of Apuleius, but my mind made a connection when reading this morning the following part of an interview with Murakami:

"Q: What made you want to retell the Oedipus myth? Did you have a plan to do this when you started Kafka on the Shore or did it come about during the writing?

"A: The Oedipus myth is just one of several motifs and isn't necessarily the central element in the novel. From the start I planned to write about about a fifteen-year-old boy who runs away from his sinister father and sets off on a journey in search of his mother. This naturally linked up with the Oedipus myth. But as I recall, I didn't have that myth in mind at the beginning. Myths are the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it can't help but link up with all sorts of myths. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is." [Bold added.]

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/m...

That's interesting. I love Murakami's work, but have not read Kafka on the Shore yet.
A connection I've been thinking about, as I'm studying Dr. Faustus in class at the moment, is whether Marlowe was influenced by Apuleius or not? The play was first performed in the 1590s, so not long after Adlington's translation was published.

David wrote: "A connection I've been thinking about, as I'm studying Dr. Faustus in class at the moment, is whether Marlowe was influenced by Apuleius or not? The play was first performed on the 1590s, so not long after Adlington's translation was published. "

What connections do you see, David? I cannot think of too much apart from the continual sins of Faustus making the wrong choices perhaps relating to Lucius' lack of any repentance.
Faust is an old German story though maybe at one point the myths borrowed from each other like Lily says.

Clari wrote: "What connections do you see, David? I cannot think of too much apart from the continual sins of Faustus making the wrong choices perhaps relating to Lucius' lack of any repentance."

I noticed a few things, but maybe they are merely parallels rather than direct allusions. For a start, Faustus's downfall comes as a result of his overreaching curiosity, in much the same way as Lucius's.
Another example, though less significant, occurs when Mephistopheles turns Robin and Rafe into an ape and a dog.

Patrice wrote: "That theme of overreaching curiosity seems to be repeated throughout all of literature from the Bible to Paradise Lost to Kilpling's Just So stories. People just want to "know" so badly!"

It is an interesting study in its own right. Why is curiosity such a continually bad and punished trait in literature? All those fables and myths filled with don't look back, don't eat the food, don't open the box, don't get your girlfriend to steal the magic potion to turn you into a bird!
Curiosity is one of the driving forces of human discovery, is the literature that seeks to control it, a reflection of a society that wants to control its people?

Clari wrote: "...Curiosity is one of the driving forces of human discovery, is the literature that seeks to control it, a reflection of a society that wants to control its people? ..."

Wonderful question, Clari. Perhaps the tales are more cautionary than controlling? Along the lines of "be careful of what you ask for"? Or the health of being able to be totally absorbed in the present of what is?

[My mind this morning is wandering along the lines of the awful (nuclear disasters, global warming, sixth extinction, ...) as well as the marvelous places (health, transportation, communications, exploration, material goods, ....) our curiosity takes us.]

P.S. later -- completely a sidebar on curiosity (smile, please):
http://goweloveit.info/entertainment/...

Lily wrote: "Clari wrote: "...Curiosity is one of the driving forces of human discovery, is the literature that seeks to control it, a reflection of a society that wants to control its people? ..."

Wonderful q..."
ah that makes me just want to get a puppy

it may be desire disguised as curiosity

A few comments on Apuleius from The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin:

"Metamorphosis serves as the basis for a method of portraying the whole of an individual's like in its more important moments of crisis: for showing how an individual becomes other than what he was. We are offered various sharply differing images of one and the same individual, images that are united in him as various epochs and stages in the course of his life. There is no evolution in the strict sense of the word; what we get, rather, is crisis and rebirth." p115

Bakhtin distinguishes the "Apuleian plot from the plots of the Greek romance" in ways I haven't quite grasped yet in his essay "Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel." So far, my sense is that the Gk romance is more of a biographical journey involving trial, whereas the Apuleian plot is a crisis-type portrayal in which the reader sees "only one or two moments that decide the fate of a man's life and determine its entire disposition. In keeping with this principle, the novel provides us with two or three different images of the same individual, images that have been disjoined and rejoined through his crisis and rebirths. In the major plot, Apuleius presents three images of Lucius: Lucius before his transformation into an ass, Lucius the Ass, and Lucius mysteriously purified and renewed. In the parallel plot we have only two images of Psyche: before she is purified by redemptive suffering, and after. But here the progression of the heroine's rebirth is not broken down into three sharply differentiated images of her, as in the case of Lucius." Also p115.

Lily wrote: ". There is no evolution in the strict sense of the word; what we get, rather, is crisis and rebirth." p115..."

That is a good point. Sometimes we change so gradually that we wake up in 20 years and realize the person we used to be is completely gone, other times we wake up in the morning and from that day forward nothing is the same as it was.

I haven't had a chance to read the introduction to the edition I have - too much other reading to catch up on - but I have been thinking of a book novella by Franz Kafka that I read a long time ago The Metamorphosis. If you have read the book, it is fascinating to compare the two stories. They both experience sudden change into a non human creature and afterward have to figure out how to live in those new bodies. The golden ass is a beast of burden, but kafka's character is more concerned about being a burden to his family. Same theme with a different twist. I don't know how much kafka was inspired by Apuleian, but it is fascinating to see how he takes similar themes and plot devices and puts his own spin on them.

Lily wrote: "Myths are the prototype for all stories. When we write a story on our own it can't help but link up with all sorts of myths. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is".."

I am reading an excellent book on this theme, it is called Tree and Leaf by Tolkien
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Also, http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoei...