Daemons, demiurges, and dualism: Apuleius' 'Metamorphoses' and the mysticism of late antiquity.

摘要

Scholars of Apuleius' Metamorphoses have recognized that the author, a Platonist himself, incorporated Platonic elements into his tale. The shortcoming of such studies is that they overwhelmingly rely on correspondence between the Apuleian text and the works of Plato himself rather than considering what Platonism had become by the 2nd century AD and Apuleius' other works. In the syncretist climate of Apuleius' day Platonic thought had diffused through popular mystical movements, most prominently in Chaldean and Gnostic thought. This dissertation will accomplish a close comparison of Metamorphoses and contemporary mystical texts. By doing so, several long-standing problems in the text can be better understood and such a comparison concretely reveals Metamorphoses as a text of its syncretistic times.;Chapter 1 contends that the deities of Book 11 are Middle Platonic deities whom Lucius approaches through theurgic ascent. As in contemporary mysticism (Chaldean Oracles, Hermetica), Lucius moves up the chain of deity---from Isis (daemon) to Osiris (transcendent deity)---from ritual to contemplation, from the concrete to ineffable. From this point of view, we see that Lucius' Osirian initiation is a fitting climax to the novel. Chapter 2 grapples with the persona of Fortune in the novel, contending that Hekate of the Chaldean Oracles is a useful template for understanding Apuleius' Blind Fortune/Seeing Fortune. The Chaldean Hekate represents to mortals either the hylic, irrational Platonic Soul or the rational, creative World-Soul, depending on the theurgic status of the individual. In Book 11 Isis is a similar dualist deity (and therefore is Blind Fortune in the previous 10 books) who can only be seen by Lucius as a positive deity after he turns away from his misguided curiosity. Chapter 3 compares Cupid and Psyche to the Sophia and Soul of Gnostic mythology. Providing a more useful point of comparison than Plato's Phaedrus, Gnostic texts include fall/resurrection tales remarkably close in detail and structure to the Apuleian tale. Comparisons root the Apuleian tale in the religious milieu of late antiquity and reinforce religious readings of the novel.