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From Mystery to Initiation: A Mytho–Ritual Poetics of Love and Sex in the Ancient Novel even in Apuleius’ Golden Ass?

Bierl, Anton. (2013) From Mystery to Initiation: A Mytho–Ritual Poetics of Love and Sex in the Ancient Novel even in Apuleius’ Golden Ass? In: Intende, Lector : Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel. Berlin ; Boston, pp. 82-99.

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Abstract

I contend that both discourses – the religious modes of expression, and the novel, based on orally transmitted traditional wonder-tales – focus upon, rework, circulate around, retract and help to overcome the central crisis of marriage as well as of the discovery of sexuality. This is very often presented from the vantage point of the girl. Novels as well as popular Greek stories deal with these issues in a dream-like manner in positive and negative ways. Fears, nightmares of monsters, and scenarios of blood and sacrifice are mingled with euphoric phantasies. Love, thus, becomes decisive for the genre. Very young adolescents are the protagonists. The objective, or telos, of the fictions is marriage, but between the frame of a beginning and an ending, we find the young lovers during their phase of marginality in a loop of destabilizing thoughts and adventures in liminal spaces.
Faculties and Departments:04 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > Departement Altertumswissenschaften > Fachbereich Gräzistik > Griechische Philologie (Bierl)
UniBasel Contributors:Bierl, Anton F.H.
Item Type:Book Section, refereed
Book Section Subtype:Further Contribution in a Book
Publisher:De Gruyter
ISBN:978-3-11-031181-5
Series Name:MythosEikonPoiesis
Issue Number:6
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Book item
Language:English
Identification Number:
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Last Modified:20 Dec 2017 07:46
Deposited On:25 Apr 2014 08:01

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