Talk:The Golden Ass

Apocryphal comment...

This claim sounds apocryphal... In the 20th Century, T. E. Lawrence carried a small copy of the "Golden Ass" in his saddlebags all through the Arab Revolt. It was Lawrence who first introduced the book to his friend Robert Graves, who later translated the work. Can anyone verify it?--Undegaussable 14:14, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

how about adding that many of the stories were used in the decameron by Boccaccio in the 1300s

The below bold portion was added by an anon user:

In 1517, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote his own version of the story, as a terza rima poem, though never completed his work.

Can anyone verify this if is accurate? --Stbalbach 02:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

• Not myself, but I put in a secondary reference.--Artimaean (talk) 06:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Non-justifiable claim / expression of opinion

Apuleius' style is as amusing as his stories, for though he wasn't a Roman by birth he was a master of Latin prose and could play with the rhythm and rhyme of the language better than a native could.

I'm a big fan of Apuleius, and he is undeniably a master of Latin prose, but the latter part of this claim is unsubstantiated and, I argue, unsubstantiable. It's ultimately a subjective assessment as to whether his prosody is better than native Romans -- whether comparing him to other extant Latin authors (Petronius was also masterful in the same genre) or to his imagined contemporaries (which is useless since they haven't survived for comparison).

The entry has been changed, but the style is rather notable, for two reasons. First, the style had a major influence on Augustine's style in The Confessions, and second, it had a large influence on the weird neo-archaic style of the Renaissance (eg Erasmus).--Artimaean (talk) 19:24, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Accessing a more recent translation

The translation offered is the 16th century one. Google books offers a 18th century on at http://books.google.com/books?id=PjgGAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+golden+ass&lr=#v=onepage&q=&f=false and there is http://books.google.com/books?id=C10vAAAAYAAJ&dq=the+golden+ass&lr= which from the late 19th is well out of copyright and has been digitised but for some reason has not yet been made available online. Something to keep under review? Ender's Shadow Snr (talk) 11:27, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Inset Stories Section

I found no better way to summarize the inset stories than their own section, which I added. Please bring up any problems here.--Artimaean (talk) 12:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

geocities link (removed)

I have removed the following link from External Links, as geocities is gone.

• • Martin Guy's electronic edition: The Golden Asse (Choice of plain text or HTML.)

66.118.149.200 (talk) 22:06, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Golden Ass/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: maclean (talk) 03:30, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Good article review (see Wikipedia:What is a good article? for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   See note below regarding Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy:

5. It is stable:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   9 Commons-hosted public domain + 1 Commons-hosted cc-by-sa-2.0

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Notes

• In Origin, "...the author's name is said to be Lucius... - avoid the passive voice. Specifically say who said the author's name was Lucius.
• The Plot section is too detailed. According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction)#Plot summaries, "The length of a plot summary should be carefully balanced with the length of the other sections." Don't re-tell all the action, but rather summarize the events of the story. I would even divide the plot into sub-sections (Book One, etc.) but rather just say at the beginning or in a Style section that the content is divided into eleven books.
  • For example, detail like "Lucius goes to sleep hungry." is unnecessary to understand the plot.
  • "The next morning, Lucius meets his aunt Byrrhena in the town..." - in the town is unnecessary detail
• Google Scholar brings up several sources that can be used to help boost the analysis portions of the article that can balance out the large plot sections.
• There needs to be additional citations, especially in the Overview section to show where this analysis is coming from. In the Style section, one citation should be dedicated to each quotation. In the Adaptations and influence section, provide a citation for each work that is influenced by this novel (for example, a reference should state that The Adventures of Pinocchio was influenced by The Golden Ass. The casual observation that both works involve a character transforming into a donkey does not necessarily mean one was influenced by another. Even better would be a description of the influence - why did Pinocchio include a scene where the transformation included - or was it just random?)

Conclusion

• Based on the above notes I will not grant GA status yet. The article is well-written and I can see the editors involved have a good grasp of the material but to meet the GA standard additional references should be consulted and additioanl citations provided. After the above notes have been addressed, I encourage the editors to re-nominate. --maclean (talk) 05:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Lucius Apuleius --> Apuleius

I've removed/modified statements in this article whereby Lucius is called "Lucius Apuleius". There is actually no evidence in ancient sources that Apuleius' praenomen was "Lucius". The tradition of calling him Lucius Apuleius began in the middle ages simply because the character of his famous novel was called Lucius. The protagonist of the novel is called Lucius in the earlier version of the tale, and that's presumably why Apuleius adopted the name for his version.

In particular I've removed the statement from the lede claiming that "the identification of the protagonist as Lucius of Madaurus has led some scholars to posit that the narrator and the author are one and the same person". It's obviously becomes a circular argument if the tradition of calling Apuleius "Lucius" comes from the novel, to then assert that the hero of the novel is really Apuleius because the hero is called "Lucius". I'm not exactly sure what "the narrator and the author are one and the same person" was supposed to imply anyway. Pasicles (talk) 21:34, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Unmentioned Translation

There is another translation of The Golden Ass by E.J. Kenney and available in Penguin Classics. This information is missing in the Translation sections. 27.32.143.151 (talk) 11:02, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Latin "Novel"?

Since there wasn't any such form as the novel till somewhere in the middle of the last millennium, what is the justification for calling The Golden Ass a novel?71.243.209.176 (talk) 00:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Because that's what it's called in the scholarship, and not without acknowledgement of your point.  davidiad { t } 04:36, 25 February 2013 (UTC)