No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Libido Sciendi: Apuleius, Boccaccio, and the Study of the History of Sexuality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2020
Abstract
This essay contributes to recent debates in the study of the history of sexuality that have developed out of a comparison of a story from Apuleius's Golden Ass and its transformation by Boccaccio in the Decameron. Addressing questions of book history, philology, and textual transmission, the article offers another perspective on the problems of identity, temporality, and epistemology that have been at the center of these debates and proposes reorienting considerations of Michel Foucault's still-contested role in the field by drawing on the underappreciated later volumes of his landmark History of Sexuality. Instead of mining the stories of Apuleius and Boccaccio for exemplary social types or for information about the social meanings of past sex acts, this essay uses philological and paratextual materials to focalize these tales' interpretive erotics, complicate the temporal relations between them, and model a way of studying the history of sexuality that is not tied to a history of social types, identities, or acts.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009
References
Works Cited
Acocella, Mariantonietta. L'asino d'oro nel Rinascimento. Ravenna: Longo, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. “Apology.” Trans. Vincent Hunink. Rhetorical Works. By Apuleius. Ed. Harrison, Stephen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. 25–121. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. Apulegio volgare: Diviso in undeci libri, novamente stampato & in molti lochi aggiontovi che nella prima impressione gli manchava, & de molte piu figure adornato, et diligentemente correcto: Con le sue fabule in margine poste. Trans. Matteo Maria Boiardo. Venezia: Nicolo d'Aristotele da Ferrara; Vincenzo de Polo da Venetia, 1519. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. Apulegio volgare, tradotto per il conto Mattheo Maria Boiardo. Trans. Matteo Maria Boiardo. Venezia: Nicolo d'Aristotele da Ferrara; Vincenzo de Polo da Venetia, 1518. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. L'Apuleio tradotto in volgare dal conte Matteo Maria Boiardo Historiato. Nuovamente, revisto, & ricorretto con ogni diligenza. Appresso aggiuntovi un breve discorso della vita dell'autore. Con una tavola da ritrovar tutte le novelle, sentenze, detti, fatti, & altre piu cose notabili, secondo che poste sono in margine; quello che per inanzi non era. Venezia: Bartolomeo detto l'Imperatore; Francesco Vinitiano, 1544. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. L'asino d'oro di Lucio Apuleio filosofo Platonico. Trans. Pompeo Vizani. Venezia: Ghirardo Imberti, 1639. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. L'asino, o Le metamorfosi: Con le 64 xilografie dell'edizione veneziana del 1519. Trans. Claudio Annaratone. Milano: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. Metamorphose, autrement, L'asne d'or. Trans. George de la Bouthiere. Lyon: Jean de Tournes; Guillaume Gazeau, 1553. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. Les métamorphoses. Trans. Vallette, Paul. Ed. Robertson, D. S. 3 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1946–56. Print.Google Scholar
Apuleius. The Metamorphoses. Trans. Arthur Hanson, J. Ed. Hanson. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989. Print. Loeb Classical Lib. 44, 453.Google Scholar
Apuleius. Pro se de magia. Ed. Hunink, Vincent. Vol. 1. Amsterdam: Gieben, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Armour, Peter. “Dante's Brunetto: The Paternal Paterine?” Italian Studies 38 (1983): 1–38. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ascoli, Albert Russell. “Boccaccio's Auerbach: Holding the Mirror up to Mimesis.” Studi sul Boccaccio 20 (1991–92): 377–97. Print.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Erich. “Frate Alberto.” Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. 1953. By Auerbach. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. 203–31. Print.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. By Bakhtin. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Holquist, . Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. 84–258. Print.Google Scholar
Barolini, Teodolinda. “Le parole son femmine e i fatti sono maschi: Toward a Sexual Poetics of the Decameron (Decameron 2.9, 2.10, 5.10).” Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture. By Barolini. New York: Fordham UP, 2006. 282–303. Rpt. of “Le parole son femmine e i fatti sono maschi: Toward a Sexual Poetics of the Decameron (Decameron II.10).” Studi sul Boccaccio 21 (1993): 175–97. Print.Google Scholar
Beroaldus, Philippus. Commentarii a Philippo Beroaldo conditi in asinum aureum Lucii Apuleii. Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris, 1500. Print.Google Scholar
Billanovich, Giuseppe. “I primi umanisti e le tradizioni dei classici latini.” Petrarca e il primo umanesimo. 1953. Padova: Antenore, 1996. 117–41. Print.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Amorosa visione. Ed. Branca, Vittore. Milano: Mondadori, 1974. Print.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Boccaccio on Poetry: Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books of Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum gentilium. Trans. Charles G. Osgood. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1930. Print.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron. Ed. Branca, Vittore. 2 vols. Torino: Einaudi, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron. 1370–72. MS. Hamilton 90. Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogie deorum gentilium. Ed. Zaccaria, Vittorio. 2 vols. Milano: Mondadori, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Bondanella, Peter, and Musa, Mark, trans. The Decameron. By Giovanni Boccaccio. New York: New Amer. Lib., 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Branca, Vittore, ed. Decameron. By Giovanni Boccaccio. 2 vols. Torino: Einaudi, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Branca, Vittore, and Vitale, Maurizio. Il capolavoro del Boccaccio e due diverse redazioni. 2 vols. Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Brown, Virginia, ed. and trans. Famous Women. By Giovanni Boccaccio. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Bruni, Francesco. Boccaccio: L'invenzione della letteratura mezzana. Bologna: Mulino, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Metamorphosis; or, Gerald and the Werewolf.” Speculum 73.4 (1998): 987–1013. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Carver, H. F. Robert. The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Print. Oxford Classical Monographs.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castelvetro, Lodovico. Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata, et sposta. Wien: Gaspar Stainhofer, 1570. Print.Google Scholar
Cestaro, Gary. “Pederastic Insemination; or, Dante in the Grammar Classroom.” Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain. Ed. Milligan, Gerry and Tylus, Jane. Toronto: U of Toronto P, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Cestaro, Gary. “Queering Nature, Queering Gender: Dante and Sodomy.” Dante for the New Millennium. Ed. Barolini, Teodolinda and Wayne Storey, H. New York: Fordham UP, 2003. 90–103. Print.Google Scholar
Chiecchi, Giuseppe, and Troisio, Luciano. Il Decameron sequestrato: Le tre edizioni censurate nel cinquecento. Milano: Unicopli, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Cicero. Epistulae ad atticum. Ed. Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1987. Print. Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana.Google Scholar
Cicero. Letters to Atticus. Ed. Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 4 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. Print. Loeb Classical Lib.Google Scholar
Contini, Gianfranco. Varianti e altra linguistica: Una raccolta di saggi, 1938–1968. Torino: Einaudi, 1970. Print.Google Scholar
Coulter, Cornelia C. “Boccaccio and the Cassinese Manuscripts of the Laurentian Library.” Classical Philology 43.4 (1948): 217–30. Print.Google Scholar
DeFilippo, Joseph G. “Curiositas and the Platonism of Apuleius' Golden Ass.” American Journal of Philology 111.4 (1990): 471–92. Print.Google Scholar
Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Gary. Queer (Re)Readings in the French Renaissance: Homosexuality, Gender, Culture. Burlington: Ashgate, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Fido, Franco. “Boccaccio's Ars Narrandi in the Sixth Day of the Decameron.” Italian Literature: Roots and Branches, Essays in Honor of Thomas Goddard Bergin. Ed. Rimanelli, Giose and Atchity, Kenneth John. New Haven: Yale UP, 1976. 225–42. Print.Google Scholar
Fido, Franco. Il regime delle simmetrie imperfette: Studi sul ṢDecameronṣ. Milano: Angeli, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Fido, Franco. “The Tale of Ser Ciappelletto (I.1).” The Decameron: First Day in Perspective. Ed. Weaver, Elissa. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2004. 59–76. Print.Google Scholar
Finkelpearl, Ellen D. Metamorphosis of Language in Apuleius: A Study of Allusion in the Novel. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1998. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorilla, Maurizio. “La lettura apuleiana del Boccaccio e le note ai manoscritti laurenziani 29, 2 e 54, 32.” Aevum 73.3 (1999): 635–68. Print.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Care of the Self. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1986. Print. Vol. 3 of The History of Sexuality. 3 vols. 1976–86.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1976. Print. Vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality. 3 vols. 1976–86.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1985. Print. Vol. 2 of The History of Sexuality. 3 vols. 1976–86.Google Scholar
Fumagalli, Edoardo. Matteo Maria Boiardo, volgarizzatore dell' ṢAsino d'oroṣ: Contributo allo studio della fortuna di Apuleio nell'umanesimo. Padova: Antenore, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Gaisser, Julia Haig. The Fortunes of Apuleius and The Golden Ass: A Study in Transmission and Reception. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Gaylard, Susan. “The Crisis of Word and Deed in Decameron V, 10.” The Italian Novella: A Book of Essays. Ed. Allaire, Gloria. New York: Routledge, 2003. 33–48. Print.Google Scholar
Gleason, Maud. Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Jonathan, and Menon, Madhavi. “Queering History.” PMLA 120.5 (2005): 1608–17. Print.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M. “Forms of Accommodation in the Decameron.” Italica 45.3 (1968): 297–313. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halperin, David M. “Forgetting Foucault.” How to Do the History of Homosexuality. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002. 24–47. Rpt. of “Forgetting Foucault: Acts, Identities, and the History of Sexuality.” Representations 63 (1998): 93–120. Print.Google Scholar
Hijmans, B. L. Jr., et al. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses, Book IX: Text, Introduction and Commentary. Groningen: Forsten, 1995. Print. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius.Google Scholar
Holsinger, Bruce W. “Sodomy and Resurrection: The Homoerotic Subject of the Divine Comedy.” Premodern Sexualities. Ed. Fradenburg, Louise and Freccero, Carla. New York: Routledge, 1996. 243–74. Print.Google Scholar
Kahane, Ahuvia, and Laird, Andrew, eds. A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius' Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Kay, Richard. Dante's Swift and Strong: Essays on Inferno XV. Lawrence: Regents P of Kansas, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Kenney, E. J. “In the Mill with the Slaves.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 133.1 (2003): 159–92. Print.Google Scholar
Keulen, Wytse. “Ad Amussim Congruentia: Measuring the Intellectual in Apuleius.” Lectiones Scrupulosae: Essays on the Text and Interpretation of Apuleius' Metamophoses in Honor of Maaike Zimmerman. Ed. Keulen, , Nauta, R. R., and Panayotakis, S. Groningen: Barkhus; Groningen U Lib., 2006. 168–202. Print.Google Scholar
Konstan, David. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Marcus, Millicent Joy. An Allegory of Form: Literary Self-Consciousness in the Decameron. Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1979. Print.Google Scholar
Martinez, Ronald L. “Apuleian Example and Misogynist Allegory in the Tale of Peronella (Decameron VII.2).” Boccaccio and Feminist Criticism. Ed. Stillinger, Thomas and Regina Psaki, F. Chapel Hill: Annali d'Italianistica, 2006. 201–16. Print.Google Scholar
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. The World at Play in Boccaccio's Decameron. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McWilliam, G. H., trans. The Decameron. By Giovanni Boccaccio. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Marilyn, Migiel. A Rhetoric of the Decameron. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2003. Print. Toronto Italian Studies.Google Scholar
Moreschini, Claudio. “Towards a History of the Exegesis of Apuleius: The Case of the ‘Tale of Cupid and Psyche.‘” Trans. Coco Stevenson. Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context. Ed. Hofmann, Heinz. London: Routledge, 1999. 215–28. Print.Google Scholar
Mortimer, Ruth. Italian Sixteenth-Century Books. Vol. 1. Harvard Coll. Lib. of Printing and Graphic Arts Catalogue of Bks. and Manuscripts. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974. Print.Google Scholar
Parkes, M. B. Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Pequigney, Joseph. “Sodomy in Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio.” Representations 36 (1991): 22–42. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pézard, André. Dante sous la pluie de feu (Enfer, chant XV). Paris: Vrin, 1950. Print.Google Scholar
Picone, Michelangelo. “Autore/Narratori.” Lessico critico decameroniano. Ed. Bragantini, Renzo and Forni, Pier Massimo. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995. 34–59. Print.Google Scholar
Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas. “Boccaccio's Adaptations of Some Latin Sources for the Decameron.” Italica 45.2 (1968): 171–94. Print.Google Scholar
Patrizia, Rafti. “Lumina dictionum: Interpunzione e prosa in Giovanni Boccaccio. IV.” Studi sul Boccaccio 29 (2001): 3–66. Print.Google Scholar
Patrizia, Rafti. “Riflessioni sull'usus distinguendi del Boccaccio negli zibaldoni.” Gli zibaldoni di Boccaccio: Memoria, scrittura, riscrittura. Ed. Bérard, Claude Cazalé and Picone, Michelangelo. Firenze: Cesati, 1998. 283–306. Print.Google Scholar
Rocke, Michael. Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Remigio, Sabbadini. Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne' secoli XIV e XV. 2 vols. 1905. Firenze: Sansoni, 1967. Print.Google Scholar
Sanguineti White, Laura. Boccaccio e Apuleio: Caratteri differenziali nella struttura narrativa del ṢDecameronṣ. Bologna: EDIM, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
Schlam, Carl C. “The Curiosity of the Golden Ass.” Classical Journal 64 (1968): 120–25. Print.Google Scholar
Schlam, Carl C. “Sex and Sanctity: The Relationship of Male and Female in the Metamorphoses.” Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass. Ed. Hijmans, B. L. and van der Paardt, R. Th. Groningen: Bouma's, 1978. 95–105. Print.Google Scholar
Shumate, Nancy. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius' Metamorphoses. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singleton, Charles S., trans. The Decameron. By Giovanni Boccaccio. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Singleton, Charles S., ed. Decameron: Edizione diplomatico-interpretativa dell'autografo Hamilton 90. By Giovanni Boccaccio. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974. Print.Google Scholar
Stone, Gregory B. “The Prick of the Rose: Boccaccio's Bisexual Hermeneutics.” Boccaccio and Feminist Criticism. Ed. Stillinger, Thomas C. and Regina Psaki, F. Chapel Hill: Annali d'Italianistica, 2006. 189–99. Rpt. of “Two Ways Not to Read (and Going Both Ways).” The Ethics of Nature in the Middle Ages: On Boccaccio's Poetaphysics. By Stone. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. 173–203. Print.Google Scholar
Traub, Valerie. “The Present Future of Lesbian Historiography.” A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies. Ed. Haggerty, George and McGarry, Molly. Malden: Blackwell, 2007. 124–45. Print.Google Scholar
Turner, James Grantham. Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France, and England, 1534–1685. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Usher, Jonathan. “Desultorietà nella novella portante di Madonna Oretta (Decameron VI, 1) e altre citazioni apuleiane nel Boccaccio.” Studi sul Boccaccio 29 (2001): 67–103. Print.Google Scholar
Valerius, Maximus. Facta et dicta memorabilia. Ed. Briscoe, John. 2 vols. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Vio, Gianluigi. “Chiose e riscritture apuleiane di Giovanni Boccaccio.” Studi sul Boccaccio 20 (1991–92): 139–65. Print.Google Scholar
Waldman, Guido, trans. The Decameron. By Giovanni Boccaccio. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Walsh, P. G. “The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine).” Greece and Rome 2nd ser., 35.1 (1988): 73–85. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walters, Jonathan. “‘No More Than a Boy’: The Shifting Construction of Masculinity from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages.” Gender and History 5.1 (1993): 20–33. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westerbrink, A. G. “Some Parodies in Apuleius' Metamorphoses.” Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass. Ed. Hijmans, B. L. and van der Paardt, R. Th. Groningen: Bouma's, 1978. 63–73. Print.Google Scholar
Williams, Craig A. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Winkler, John. Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's Golden Ass. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. Print.Google Scholar