Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-17T00:11:34.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

WOMEN'S VOICES IN THE LUCIANIC ONOS: THE TALE OF THE ‘EDIBLE MAN’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Elizabeth Dollins*
Affiliation:
Cheltenham Ladies' College, UK
*

Abstract

This article argues that female characters are active participants in the text of the Onos. Among women who are in control of their experiences we encounter the slave girl Palaestra. She uses a forceful metaphor equating a man with the food being prepared in her kitchen, which prefigures much of the ensuing narrative and has the effect of transforming Lucius into food/text to be consumed by the reader. It becomes clear that she and various other female characters, whose abilities go further than the usual novelistic antagonistic skill of controlling their own experience and manipulating other characters, choose and choreograph Lucius' narrative.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adams, J. N. (1982) The Latin sexual vocabulary, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballengee, J. (2005) ‘Below the belt: looking into the matter of adventure time’, in Branham, R. B. (ed.), The Bakhtin circle and ancient narrative (Ancient Narrative Supplementum 3), Groningen, 130–63.Google Scholar
Bartsch, S. (2000) ‘The philosopher as Narcissus: vision, sexuality and self-knowledge in classical antiquity’, in Nelson, R. (ed.), Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: seeing as others saw, Cambridge, 7097.Google Scholar
Berthiaume, G. (1982) Les roles du Mágeiros: études sur la boucherie la cuisine et le sacrifice dans la Grèce ancienne (Mnemosyne Supplementum 70), Leiden.Google Scholar
Bramble, J. C. (1974) Persius and the programmatic satire: a study in form and imagery, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Brooks, P. (1993) Body work: objects of desire in modern narrative, Cambridge, MA; London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bychkov, O. (1999) ‘ἡ τοῦ κάλλους ἀπορρόη: a note on Achilles Tatius 1.9.4–5, 5.13.4’, CQ 49.1, 339–41.Google Scholar
Dollins, E. (2012a) ‘Leucippe: chasing Achilles Tatius’ disappearing heroine’, Rosetta 12, 35–48, available at: http://www.rosetta.bham.ac.uk/Issue_12/dollins.pdf.Google Scholar
Dollins, E. (2012b) ‘Readerly curiosity: theorizing narrative experience in the Greek novel’, PhD thesis, University of Exeter.Google Scholar
Goldhill, S. (2001) ‘The erotic eye: visual stimulation and cultural conflict’, in Goldhill, S. (ed.), Being Greek under Rome, Cambridge, 154–94.Google Scholar
Gowers, E. (1993) The loaded table: representations of food in Roman literature, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graverini, L. (2001) ‘L'incontro di Lucio e Fotide: stratificazioni intertestuali in Apul. Met. 6–7’, Athenaeum 89.2, 425–46.Google Scholar
Hall, E. (1995) ‘The ass with the double vision: politicising an ancient Greek novel’, in Margolies, D., Joannou, M. (eds.), Heart of the heartless world, London, 4759.Google Scholar
Henderson, J. (1975) The maculate muse: obscene language in Attic comedy, Oxford.Google Scholar
Henry, M. (1992) ‘The edible woman: Athenaeus’ concept of the pornographic’, in Richlin, A. (ed.), Pornography and representation in Greece and Rome, New York, 250–86.Google Scholar
Henry, M. (2000) ‘Athenaeus the ur-pornographer’, in Braund, D., Wilkins, J. (eds.), Athenaeus and his world: reading Greek culture in the Roman empire, Exeter, 503–10.Google Scholar
Hunnings, L. (2009) ‘Imagining the ancient Greek slave: death, social death, and resurrection’, PhD Thesis, Royal Holloway.Google Scholar
King, H. (1998) Hippocrates’ woman: reading the female body in ancient Greece, London; New York.Google Scholar
König, J. (2008) ‘Body and text’, in Whitmarsh, T. (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the Greek and Roman novel, Cambridge, 127–44.Google Scholar
May, R. (2010) ‘An ass from Oxyrhynchus: P.Oxy. lxx.4762, Loukios of Patrae and the Milesian Tales’, Ancient Narrative 8, 5984.Google Scholar
Morales, H. (2004) Vision and narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Cleitophon, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Morales, H. (2005) ‘Metaphor, gender, and the ancient Greek novel’, in Paschalis, M., Frangoulidis, S., Harrison, S. (eds.), Metaphor and the ancient novel (Ancient Narrative Supplementum 4), Groningen, 122.Google Scholar
Ní Mheallaigh, K. (2009) ‘Ec[h]oing the ass-novel: reading and desire in Onos, Metamorphoses and The name of the rose ’, Ramus 38.1, 109–22.Google Scholar
Rimell, V. (2002) Petronius and the anatomy of fiction, Cambridge.Google Scholar
West, M. L. (2010) ‘The way of a maid with a moke: P. Oxy. 4762’, ZPE 175, 3340.Google Scholar
Whitmarsh, T. (2004) Ancient Greek literature, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Whitmarsh, T. (2010) ‘Domestic poetics: Hippias’ house in Achilles Tatius’, Classical Antiquity 29.2, 327–48.Google Scholar
Wilkins, J. (2000) The boastful chef: the discourse of food in ancient Greek Comedy, Oxford.Google Scholar
Wright, M. (2012) The comedian as critic: Greek Old Comedy and poetics, Bristol.Google Scholar