Religion and Apuleius' Golden Ass
eBook - ePub

Religion and Apuleius' Golden Ass

The Sacred Ass

  1. 240 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Religion and Apuleius' Golden Ass

The Sacred Ass

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

This volume examines Apuleius' comic donkey novel, The Golden Ass, within the context of the popular beliefs and Jewish and Christian writings that were part of the intellectual culture of his own day in 2nd century C.E. North Africa, a culture which can also be glimpsed in some early Arabic writings.

The novel was written against a cultural and religious background in which the donkey had various connotations, both positive and negative, but tended to be admired in Jewish, Christian, and later, in Muslim writings. Smith explores the influence of such popular opinions on The Golden Ass and how Apuleius presented Isis and Osiris as desirable alternatives to the claims of both Christianity and magic, offering hope of spiritual renewal partly modelled on contemporary religious apocalyptic literature. Complemented by images of contemporary art, including amulets and terra cotta figures, this volume gives readers a better understanding of how Apuleius, ostensibly a Platonist and member of the Roman establishment, could maintain an intellectual independence in a North African milieu while still drawing on hope in the salvation of the gods.

Religion and Apuleius' Golden Ass provides a fascinating new approach to this much disputed novel, of interest not only to students and scholars of Apuleius and Roman literature, but also scholars interested in Christian and Jewish literature and beliefs of the early centuries of the first millennium C.E.

Frequently asked questions

Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes, you can access Religion and Apuleius' Golden Ass by Warren S. Smith in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Historia & Historia antigua. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2022
ISBN
9781000813005
Edition
1
Topic
Historia
Subtopic
Historia antigua

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Half-Title Page
  3. Series Page
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright Page
  6. Dedication Page
  7. Contents
  8. List of Illustrations
  9. Acknowledgments
  10. Preface
  11. 1 Asinine Thinking
  12. 2 Magical Thinking: The Witchcraft Narrative
  13. 3 Fortune Competes with Providence: The Meaning of Laughter
  14. 4 Robbers Think Like Heroes
  15. 5 Cupid and Psyche: Thinking Like a Winged Creature
  16. 6 Thinking Like a Christian Apologist
  17. 7 Is the Golden Ass a God?
  18. 8 Thinking Like a Christian
  19. 9 Christian and Jewish Apocalyptic Writings
  20. 10 Balancing Judaism and Christianity
  21. Appendix: Lucius “Becomes” Apuleius
  22. Bibliography
  23. Index