From the Bellies of Beasts: Performance and the Co-Production of Identity in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

Susan A. Curry (Indiana University)

The question, quis ille?, in the prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses not only introduces the reader/listener to the narrator of the tale to follow, but also indicates that the issue of identity, of who or what one is, will be a significant theme of the novel. Because the major story of the novel involves the human Lucius’ transformation into an ass and back again, one of the most important factors involved in the issue of identity is that of species membership, that is, whether an individual is “human” or “animal”.

This paper will investigate the issue of human/animal identity in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Building on recent studies of performance and spectacle in the Metamorphoses, including Stavros Frangoulidis’ Roles and Performances in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (2001) (esp. Chapter IV, “Man and Animal”) and Niall Slater’s “Passion and Petrification: The Gaze in Apuleius” (1998) and “Spectator and Spectacle in Apuleius” (2000), and Keith Bradley’s work on the “animalization” of slaves (“Animalizing the Slave: The Truth of Fiction” (2000)), I explore the notion that one’s identification as “human” is entailed in the giving of a “proper” performance.

Focusing on two performances: 1.) the robber Thrasyleon’s almost too successful performance as a bear (IV.13-21), and 2.) Lucius as ass’ only somewhat successful performance as a human for his owner Thiasus (X.13-23) (these are also the focus of Frangoulidis’ “Man and Animal” chapter), I suggest that performing in the Metamorphoses is not simply a matter of taking on a temporary role, but is also both the expression and instigator of one’s own identification, including one’s identification as “human”.

Identification itself, however, is a tricky business. One might seem one thing to oneself (one might call this one’s “self-image”) and something else entirely to others (one’s “public image”). According to Richard Jenkins in Social Identity (2004), an individual’s identification is a result of the interplay between these two aspects of identity. For an individual’s identity performance to succeed, one requires the complicity of one’s audience. In other words, others help to shape one’s identity; or, to put it in theatrical terms, one’s identity is co-produced.

The interplay between Lucius’ own self-image as human and his public image as ass is responsible for much of the reader’s pleasure and the comedic elements of the plot. However, these issues of identification also have their serious side. Treating a human “like an animal”, as Bradley has shown in the case of human slaves, may affect the human’s own sense of self as “human”. Likewise, a man dressed as a bear, acting “like a bear”, may play the part so successfully that he not only convinces others through his performance, but he also convinces himself. Lucius’s identification as “human”, too, varies according to his treatment by others. Thus, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses presents a world in which, whether one is truly and magically transformed or not, slave or elite, one may at any moment be rendered “animal”.