As histórias no Asinus aureus e a sua relação com o romance

Abstract

The odyssey of Lucius integrates several stories, passible of grouping in two distinct narrative sets: the first one, formed by the story of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ and the episodes of Charite and Haemus/Tlepolemus; the second one, formed by the adultery and crime stories of books IX and X. In sharp contrast with the stories of adultery and crime – which, usually, agree to the ideological stadium of Lucius’ manifest decay –, the first narratives offer euphoric examples of victories on the most varied forms of Fortuna’s expression. Besides, those stories echo strong literary influences of well established genres, such as the heroic narrative, in the case of Haemus; the idyllic narrative in Cupid and Psyche story; the tragic one, in the outcome of the story of Charite and Tlepolemus. The conjugation of the literary nature of the texts with elements as the extension and the thematic, structural and syntactic organization, raises the issue about their definition in the Asinus aureus’ structure. The present paper aims at showing how these stories don’t represent narratives merely complementary of Lucius’ odyssey, but state as central odysseys as this one – viewed, however, from the standpoint of the conventional values of the genre defining each one of them.