The team in charge of compiling the outstanding Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius' Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass has now also created an accompanying volume to its imminently forthcoming commentary on Met. 11, the ‘Isis Book’. This is the third in a series, with B. L. Hijmans Jr. and R. Th. Van der Paardt (eds), Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass (Groningen, 1978) (AAGA) covering general themes of the novel, and M. Zimmerman et al. (eds), AAGA 2 (Groningen, 1998) concentrating on Cupid and Psyche as a companion volume to the Groningen Commentary on that section of the Metamorphoses.
This new volume collects articles on various aspects of the last book of the novel, which reflect its enigmatic nature by allowing often contradictory but always well argued essays to stand next to each other. The eleven articles by established scholars cover the book from many angles and tackle the problem of ‘seriousness’ of the Isis book under new, and often contradictory, perspectives. It begins with more traditional approaches such as textual criticism, as M. Zimmerman explains some of her textual choices for her new Oxford Classical Texts edition. L. Nicolini, building on her Italian book on linguistic puns in Metamorphoses, points out that even the ‘serious’ Met. 11 contains a sizeable amount of wordplay.
The volume then moves on to contradictory character analyses. U. Egelhaaf-Gaisser's semiotic perspective focuses on Lucius' characterization through his baldness in Met. 11. S. Harrison's approach is more satirical, as he sees Lucius' character in Met. 11 as a continuation of his portrait in the previous ten, despite the religious conversion. The impact of philosophy on Met. 11 has been given a substantial space in this book: L. Graverini looks at the use of prudentia and providentia in the novel and argues that Lucius has won some understanding in the last book as opposed to the previous ten, with the help of benevolent Isis. F. Drews, on the other hand, contradicts Graverini by studying the pervasive influence of Plato on the novel by reading it alongside Apuleius' philosophical Middle Platonist books. L. van der Stockt reads Apuleius' and Plutarch's portraits of Isis together and focuses on the differences in the authors' philosophies and characterization of Isis. E. Finkelpearl studies the same two authors' differences in genre, portrayal of Egypt and of personalized versus institutionalized religion. For her, Lucius' religious belief at the end is credible. S. Tilg approaches the matter of Isis' ‘seriousness’ through the novel's intertextuality and does not see the many intertextual references in the whole of the novel as a game changer. For him, the novel is intended to be both comic and serious at the same time. K. Dowden traces Lucius' journeys through Greece and to Rome, and sees his arrival in Rome and eventual settling down at Isis' temple as a proper telos and end point of Lucius' life. W. Smith looks again at the intriguing passage in Met. 11.27, where Lucius seems to identify himself with the author by claiming to be from Madaurus (like Apuleius) rather than from Corinth (where he appears to come from in Met. 1). Smith sees parallels to autodiegetic Greek novels and the Acts of the Apostles.
This book is wilfully contradictory, since it allows, even encourages, divergent interpretations to stand next to each other and engage with each other. It becomes clear that even today we cannot reach a wholly satisfactory explanation of Met. 11 and the Isis problem. As such its existence is a skilful demonstration of postmodern scholarship. It works well as such because its contrariness itself in the end forms a unifying whole. Just as the novel cannot be pinned down and put into a simple interpretative box, and even less so the enigmatic Book 11, so do modern interpretations have to work from contradictory approaches. This approach works in this particular book because it is a multi-authored volume.
Still, this volume is supposed to be a companion piece to the imminent commentary on Met. 11, which is also a multi-authored work. In fact, many of the authors of this volume are part of the collective working on the Groningen commentary. Most papers were delivered at a conference in Rostock in 2008 on the Isis book, designed to bring the contributors to the commentary together. What is a virtue in this particular conference volume may well lead to confusion in the commentary, so it remains to be seen how the diverging views can be reconciled. It is certainly a good thing to let scholars declare their interest and own interpretative angle on Met. 11 here, in a dedicated volume that thrives on the contradictions raised.
