APULEIUS’ ASS AND CERVANTES’ DOGS IN DIALOGUE¹

LORETO NÚÑEZ

I. Introduction

Scholars who study Apuleius’ Asinus Aureus together with Cervantes’ Coloquio de los perros often focus on questions of influence or filiation, either advocating for such a relationship between the texts or rejecting claims of this sort.² González de Amezúa, for instance, denies that Cervantes could have been influenced by Apuleius:

The ‘escueta cita’ of The Golden Ass mentioned by González de Amezúa appears towards the middle of the Coloquio. An old witch speaks to the dog Berganza, whom she believes to be a man who has been transformed into a dog, about his potential retransformation:

For González de Amezúa, this passage does not provide any evidence for a connection between The Golden Ass and the Coloquio. The scholar’s statement is, of course, a defence of Cervantes’ unquestionable originality. Yet, over the last decades, various critics, promoting the advantages of an intertextual approach and accepting that connections with other authors do not undermine a writer’s singularity, have tried to demonstrate Apuleius’ influence on Cervantes.⁵ However, the present chapter will not consist of a piece of Quellenforschung that seeks to prove that Apuleius influenced Cervantes, although this may ultimately appear more probable as a result of our case study.⁶ Instead, I propose to consider ‘The afterlife of Apuleius’ from a slightly different point of view: I will approach his Metamorphoses and Cervantes’ Coloquio de los perros from a double dialogical perspective. The expression ‘in dialogue’ in the title of this chapter should be understood in two senses: first, as an act of bringing-into-dialogue in a comparative perspective, and, second, in connection with the notion of ‘intertextual dialogue’.

Regarding the comparative point of view, I should add that my approach is not that of classical tradition or reception studies, which concentrate, to put it very schematically, on one of the two poles of the comparison, the ancient or the later, respectively. As García Jurado puts it:

In the field of Apuleian studies, these approaches have produced such inspiring works as the studies by Carver and Gaisser.⁸ In spite of the importance and relevance of such investigations, I propose a comparative analysis in the strong sense of the word, and this according to a specific comparative method: the ‘differential comparison’ (‘comparaison différentielle’), as theorized by Heidmann. According to this method, we not only compare texts on the basis of their similarities but also take into account their differences and specificities. Far too often, the focus is placed on analogies while the particularities of each text are left to one side. Instead, Heidmann’s method ‘applies comparison in order to differentiate the literary creations’ (‘recourt à la comparaison avec l’objectif de différencier les créations littéraires’), thus taking into account the fact that literature ‘proceeds by differentiation’ (‘procède par différenciation’), since, at least in our culture, an author wants to distinguish him/herself from his/her predecessors.⁹ Furthermore, the differential comparison tries to avoid pre-established hierarchies. Hierarchies of this sort are very frequent when dealing with ancient texts: these texts are either considered to be mere sources of inspiration but of no further interest, or they are put up on a pedestal, with everything that follows them being dismissed as inferior. Heidmann instead suggests constructing an ‘axis of comparison’ (‘axe de comparaison’) which puts the texts ‘on the same level, i.e. in a non-hierarchical and non-hierarchizing relation’ (‘sur un même plan, c’est-à-dire dans un rapport non hiérarchique et non-hiérarchisant’).¹⁰

One possible level of comparison if we move in this direction is the ‘intertextual dialogue’, the second facet of the expression ‘in dialogue’. Instead of a static conception of intertextuality, in the sense of influence or borrowing, Heidmann proposes a dialogical notion according to which ‘a text responds to a proposal of meaning by another text’ (‘un texte répond à une proposition de sens faite par un autre texte’).¹¹ In this sense, the texts are involved in a dialogue in which the two interlocutors have equal importance. This is very important from the point of view of the differential comparison, since Heidmann proposes to consider not so much the different, but the ‘differential resulting from the process of differentiation. The differentiation is a relational notion which, instead of opposing the same and the different, indicates the process leading from one to the other’ (‘différentiel résultant d’un processus de différenciation. La différenciation est une notion relationnelle qui, au lieu d’opposer le même et le différent, désigne le processus qui mène de l’un à l’autre’).¹²

In my opinion, the dialogical elements between Apuleius and Cervantes take various forms. Before taking a closer look at the texts, I will briefly mention two general examples of this dialogue. The first focuses on the content of the texts. If we consider the animal dimension of the protagonists, a general comparison reveals that both authors have chosen to narrate the majority of the events from the perspective of an animal: ass or dog, both character and narrator. Yet in Apuleius we find a man, Lucius, who is transformed into an ass and then retransformed into a human being. In Cervantes, Berganza and Scipio are dogs and remain so, even if the possibility also remains that they might have a human mother. Therefore, we could speak of an animalized man in Apuleius, and of two humanized dogs in Cervantes. Yet, as I have shown elsewhere,¹³ a more detailed comparison reveals that the situation is not so clear, and that both authors actually play with the fluctuation between the human and the animal, even if they do so in different manners.

The second general example of intertextual dialogue between our authors concerns a rather formal aspect of their respective tales, namely the distribution of the masters to whom the heroes are subjected during the story:

As we can see, the number of masters in each text is the same. Furthermore, there are similarities between cases, in spite of the evident differences. Apuleius’ robbers may find an echo in Cervantes’ shepherds, who steal their master’s animals. The Roman soldier may have been transformed into the corrupt Spanish police officer, a choice which would underline a critical portrayal of authorities. Apuleius’ gardener has a double in Cervantes’ Moor. The ancient divinity Isis may have been metamorphosed into the pious Mahudes, a historical figure who, after having been cured of a terrible illness, dedicated his life to the Christian God.¹⁴ Thus, the formal analysis soon brings to light interesting points concerning the contents. This is particularly the case in the passages that I intend to consider in the following pages: the beginnings, which will receive more detailed attention, and the endings, as well as episodes towards the middle of each work, which I will mention more briefly.

II. Beginnings

Both works start with what we might consider to be a multi-level opening. First, there are the openings of the works proper—the famous prologue in Apuleius and the ‘prólogo al lector’ in Cervantes—which are peritextual passages the statuses of which oscillate between ‘reality’ and fiction. Then there are the openings that are already part of the fictional world: the Aristomenes episode in the Metamorphoses and, in Cervantes’ collection, the ‘novela’ of the Casamiento engañoso (Deceitful marriage), a trickster-tricked-story. Coming out of hospital after being treated for syphilis, the Alférez/Ensign Campuzano reports to the Licenciate Peralta how, pretending to be a rich man, he had married Doña Estefanía hoping to profit from her wealth. But, as he explains, he had been outwitted by her. This narrative is followed by the reading of the Coloquio de los perros, in which Berganza narrates his life to Scipio. In what follows, I would like to present an overview of certain elements in both openings.

Much has been written about Apuleius’ famous and complex prologue and it will not be possible to consider all of its features here.¹⁵ I will mention only a few aspects which are relevant for the dialogue between Apuleius and Cervantes. Keeping our focus on the word ‘dialogue’, we can note that the Latin author begins his work by giving the reader the impression of overhearing a conversation which has already started:

As though answering an opposition (‘at’), an indefinite ‘I’ (‘ego’) addresses a ‘you’ (‘tibi’). It promises a variety of stories (‘varias fabulas’) dealing with transformations (‘conversas […] refectas’). The initial passage anticipates the general topic of the work: Lucius’ surprising transformation into an ass, his adventures, and the stories which he hears before his re-transformation into a man. Yet the anticipation is neither explicit nor detailed, being limited, rather, to general and vague indications. What receives more attention is the portrayal we find in the second part of the prologue, introduced by the famous passage ‘I begin. “Who’s that?” Wait a little bit’ (‘Exordior. “Quis ille?” Paucis accipe’).¹⁷ Then there is a biography in miniature about a person born in Greece who came to Rome and there learnt to speak Latin. The last element may of course also be related to Apuleius himself. The prologue is then concluded by the statement: ‘We’re about to start a Greek story. Reader, look out: you will have fun’ (‘Fabulam Graecanicam incipimus. Lector intende: laetaberis’).¹⁸ The prologue thus ends with the promise that the book will give pleasure to the reader (‘laetaberis’), and also arouse his admiration (‘mireris’).

Various of these elements receive a response in Cervantes’ ‘prólogo al lector’ (prologue to the reader) to his Novelas ejemplares. There is the abrupt address to the reader at the start of the prologue: ‘I wish it were possible, dearest reader, to avoid writing this prologue’ (‘quisiera yo, si fuera posible, lector amantísimo, escusarme de escribir este prólogo[…]’).¹⁹ Instead of an adversative beginning, as in Apuleius, we have a negative statement about the text we are reading. In addition, and this is rather more interesting, the fictional biographical statements of Apuleius’ prologue receive a response through a biographical passage. Cervantes explains that a portrayal of him should have opened the edition of his ‘novelas’, and then adds that a friend ‘would have written under the portrait: “The person you see here […]”’ (‘poniendo debajo del retrato : “Éste que véis aquí […]”’).²⁰ There then follows a quotation from this imaginary text, which deals with Cervantes’ real life and works. There is, therefore, a combination of fiction and reality, as in Apuleius, even if it is somewhat different here. Whereas the fictional biography in the Latin text contains some real information about Apuleius, in the Castilian work, by contrast, the real biography is set into the frame of an imaginary portrayal of the author.

A last point should be mentioned regarding the end of Apuleius’ prologue, where he introduces a ‘fabula Graecanica’. This statement finds an echo in a famous passage of Cervantes’ prologue, where he proudly affirms:

This assertion about his own originality should not be understood as a negation of, but rather as an implied allusion to, his being inspired by other authors, such as Boccaccio²² or, more importantly for our present purposes, Apuleius. With his ‘fabula Graecanica’, the latter may hint at other authors as well, perhaps even at the Greek Metamorphoses.

After both prologues, we face other beginnings. As is well known, Apuleius gives the reader another start inside Lucius’ fiction: the Aristomenes episode. Lucius reports, as narrator of the present, how his Lucius-character of the past met two travellers when journeying to Thessaly.²³ One of these was castigating the other one, calling him a liar because of a story he had just narrated: ‘Spare me this tissue of crazy and monstrous lies’ (‘Parce […] in verba ista haec tam absurda tamque immania mentiendo’).²⁴ Lucius the character interferes in the conversation. He criticizes the sceptical traveller, saying:

The passage is a sort of apology for fiction. As if the preparation of the prologue had not been sufficient, this initial episode too prepares the unbelievable story of the protagonist’s transformation into an ass. These elements anticipate a possible censure from the reader, who is asked to believe the unbelievable. The first time, in the prologue, the method is more direct, since the words are explicitly addressed to the reader. In its repetition, the procedure is indirect: this time the apology comes through the dialogue reported by Lucius the narrator, who quotes the words of Lucius the character. Yet neither of the passages is explicit regarding the anticipation of the protagonist’s adventures.

Several of these aspects can also be found in Cervantes, albeit with some variations.²⁶ Here too there is a multi-layered beginning. After the prologue which introduces the whole collection, there is a piece about the Casamiento engañoso, which brings in the Coloquio de los perros. Yet, rather than a serial or lineal presentation as in Apuleius, there is a system of duplication by insertion, since the Coloquio de los perros is embedded in the ‘novela’ El Casamiento engañoso. Just after narrating his trickster-tricked-story, the Ensign Campuzano gives a notebook to the Licentiate Peralta. He says that he has written down the dialogue between Berganza and Scipio that he overheard while in the hospital. There is an immediate difference: the anticipating elements in Apuleius were quite implicit, focusing on the general question of the unbelievable and lacking any explicit preparation for Lucius’ transformation into an ass. In Cervantes, on the other hand, the reader is informed in advance that the characters are about to read an exchange between two dogs. However, here too, the reality of the unbelievable is questioned, since Peralta rejects the likelihood of the canine dialogue. Furthermore, he does so without Campuzano giving a complete defence of it in response:

Peralta’s sceptical position echoes the incredulous traveller in Apuleius. However, whereas in the Latin author, the prologue and then Lucius’ answer were set against such criticism, the situation is different in Cervantes. As one sees in this passage, Campuzano defends first of all the pleasure of reading the Coloquio and not so much its ‘reality’. The truthfulness of the canine dialogue is questioned through other elements in the text. First, the transcriber, Campuzano, is characterized just before his narration as a figure who does not hesitate to deceive or mislead other people. Furthermore, he claims to have overheard the dialogue while in the hospital, probably in a febrile condition and in a state of delirium. He therefore admits the possibility that the conversation might have been a dream. Finally, at the opening of the Coloquio proper, the dogs are themselves surprised by their capacity to speak:

The difficulty of the ‘reality’ of the dog-speech is neglected in favour of the only possible explanation the dogs themselves give: according to Berganza, it is something which ‘goes beyond the bounds of nature’ (‘pasa de los términos de naturaleza’); for Scipio it is a ‘miracle’ (‘milagro’). Such statements do not increase the ‘reality’-aspect of the canine conversation; rather, they intensify its supernatural or preternatural character. More than giving a ‘reality’-value to the canine dialogue, such statements question it. This is reinforced further through the attraction of opposites which seems to be present between the two dogs: leaving their irrational nature behind, they have now become rational beings. Through the various beginnings, Cervantes’ dogs show how extremes meet, mixing the categories of the human and the animal in a way that is very similar to that found in Apuleius, after Lucius’ transformation. Starting from different situations—a man who will become an ass in Apuleius, and two dogs who talk and think like human beings in Cervantes—both authors manage to destabilize the frontiers between the animal and the human, between the rational and irrational and, more generally, between ‘reality’ and fiction. This oscillation is to be found in the endings of the two works as well.

III. The conclusion in Apuleius and the endings in Cervantes

As is well known, The Golden Ass ends with Lucius recovering his human shape, thanks to the goddess Isis. However, this does not mean that the protagonist is presented as a rational person. On the contrary, he is characterized as a religious zealot. He mentions the numerous initiations he goes through, the fact that he spends a great deal of money on these activities, and that he even sacrifices his hair for the goddess:

The last sentence of the text offers a portrayal of Lucius not so much as a rational man but, rather, as a fanatic, proud of his baldness (‘calvitio’) and willing to work in order to increase the money of his congregation (‘gaudens obibam’). Scipio and Berganza also end up with religion as a last step, following the ‘good Christian Mahudes’ (‘buen cristiano Mahudes’).³⁰ Yet this lifestyle does not mean that the two dogs do not appreciate the gift of speech and of intelligence. They show that they do throughout their conversation, as well as at its end, when they express their hopes to repeat the dialogue and enjoy the possibility of talking in order to narrate and hear the life of Scipio:

The rational aspect of the text is intensified in the second ending, which turns back to the frame with Campuzano and Peralta. Even if the latter still does not want to fully accept the ‘reality’ of the canine dialogue, he now does so in a more qualified way:

Peralta accentuates not only the ‘art’ and the ‘invention’ of the Coloquio (‘artificio […] invención’), but also the pleasure it has been to read it, a recreation for the ‘mind’ (‘entendimiento’). This is linked to two dogs, which are animals from the beginning to the end, but are provided with a certain degree of intelligence and reason, indeed even rationality. Compared to these dogs, which remain canine but seem rational, the human ex-ass Lucius, in spite of his re-transformation into a human being, appears to be even less rational. Before looking at the final two passages, I would like to note a possible parallel between the last words of the two texts. In The Golden Ass, Lucius says he used to walk around happily with his baldness, ‘gaudens obibam’;³³ the last expression of the Casamiento engañoso is ‘off they went’ (‘se fueron’).³⁴ Another structural similarity, combined with content elements, is to be found in the middle of the two works.

IV. The central embedded narratives and the remarks concluding them

Both texts contain towards the middle an important embedded narrative.³⁵ In Apuleius, there is the famous story of Cupid and Psyche, narrated by an old servant to Charite, the young woman kidnapped by the same thieves who had stolen Lucius the ass from Milo’s house. In Cervantes, it is the speech of the old witch Cañizares, who reports to Berganza that he is the son of the dead witch Montiela and that he has been transformed into a dog at his birth. These are two extremely interesting episodes.³⁶ It is impossible to analyse the complexity of both passages, either considered individually or in their connection to one another. The intertextual dialogue is accentuated through the explicit mention of Apuleius in Cervantes’ scene, in the text mentioned towards the beginning of my paper: the old witch wishes that Berganza’s retransformation will be ‘as easy as the way they say Apuleius did it in The Golden Ass’ (‘fuera tan fácil como el que se dice de Apuleyo en El asno de oro’).³⁷ I will confine myself to the concluding part of the episodes, where we return to the frame narrative, i.e. the narrative by Lucius and Berganza respectively, and thus to the main narrators. In these passages, one can perceive more precisely what Maingueneau calls the ‘scenography’ (‘scénographie’) of the narration: it is the ‘narrative scene constructed by the text’ (‘scène narrative construite par le texte’) in which the ‘reader is assigned a place’ (‘le lecteur se voit assigner une place’).³⁸ In Apuleius, the scenography of the narration about Cupid and Psyche is especially alluded to when Lucius concludes the insertion as follows:

Lucius does not present the secondary narrator, the old servant of the thieves, in a positive manner. On the contrary, he characterizes her negatively and ridicules her by saying that she is a ‘crazy, drunken old hag’ (‘delira et temulenta […] anicula’). However, he accentuates the beauty of the narrative she has just been narrating (‘tam bellam fabellam’). Lucius explains how much he regretted not having been able to write down the story (‘dolebam […] quod pugillares et stilum non habebam qui […] praenotarem’). This sentence recalls the asinine status of his character in the past. It was impossible for him to write anything down with a stylus, since he had not hands but hooves. As Heidmann has shown, precisely by reference to this sentence, Lucius the narrator, again a human being, accentuates the fact that what has just been read is not the old woman’s oral narrative heard by an ass, but the text written down by a man after having recovered his human shape.⁴⁰

The scenography in Cervantes also plays with the status of the communicative partners and with the tension between human and animal, but in a different manner. The possible human nature of Berganza and Scipio which Cañizares explains to Berganza is not presented as the version that the two dogs would prefer. On the contrary, if they could choose, they would prefer to be dogs and not the sons of a witch. Furthermore, Cañizares’ speech is characterized as especially artificial through the deployment of a complex embedded structure which cannot be analysed here.⁴¹ Moreover, what she says is explicitly called into question. In reference to Camacha’s words, quoted by Cañizares in her narrative, and anticipating a possible re-transformation of the two dogs into human beings, Scipio says in a very negative way:

In Cervantes, the canine presence is used in order to insist on the ridiculous aspect of the human explanation for the existence of speaking dogs. In Apuleius, the allusion to the asinine status of Lucius the character accentuates the fact that it is the human narrator Lucius who has just been reporting the story about Cupid and Psyche, and not the old woman. Notice that the aged feminine figure is used by both authors. In Cervantes, as if accentuating the dialogue, the figure even appears twice: through the character of the old Cañizares and through Scipio’s expression ‘old wives’ tales’ (‘cuentos de viejas’). The motif of the old women’s tale is an element which has had a huge success in literature, with its reuse in the tradition of fairy tales, such as in Perrault’s contes or the Grimms’ Märchen, continuing a game of variations which is already present in our authors.⁴³ To this generic tendency, Scipio here adds another, in reference to the novel, or rather to the ‘novella’ à la Boccaccio, when he says that his speech is something new and ‘never seen before’ (‘jamás visto’). This is, of course, also a hint at the ‘novela ejemplar’ which includes the Cañizares-episode, and at the collection of the Novelas ejemplares as a whole. This element invites us to relate Apuleius’ old woman’s tale not only to Cañizares’ narration but also to its frame, the Coloquio de los perros. I think that Cervantes responds in a twofold manner to the scenography of the narration of Cupid and Psyche: through Cañizares’ narration, on the one hand, and through the narrative setting of the Coloquio as a whole, on the other. In order to clarify this point, it will be useful to refer to a series of images. I will not argue that these representations are genetically related, at least not all of them, but I do think that they illustrate very well the respective scenographies, which may in fact be connected.

Figure 1. Boiardo, Apulegio volgare (Venise 1537) 31 recto, © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München: 1228692 A.lat.b. 34, p. 31 recto, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10171417-6.

Figure 2. Bernardo Daddi, Story of the Love of Psyche and Cupido© Paris BnF Richelieu -Estampes et photographies, location: TA-39-4.

I will start with a representation (fig. 1), in Boiardo’s translation, of the context of the narration of Cupid and Psyche’s story by the old servant of the brigands. One can see on this image the servant speaking to the young Charite and Lucius the ass looking at and listening to this communicative exchange. Under the image, we read ‘novella of Amor and Psyche’s falling in love’ (‘novella dello innamoramento di Amore & di Psiche’). Note the use of ‘novella’ for the Cupid-Psyche narrative.

On the famous illustration (fig. 2) by the Master of the Die and Agostino Veneziano, the position of Lucius the ass is a little different. Lucius the ass is no longer on the same level as Charite and the old woman. Instead, he is hidden behind the scene between the two women. It is from this marginal and hidden position that our protagonist is listening to the narrative and he does so very attentively, with his ears pricked up.⁴⁴ The text under the image comments on the narrative situation. As has often been done, the text identifies the ass with Apuleius himself: ‘Apuleius narrates that (while he was transformed into an ass […])’ (‘narra Apuleo che (mentr’egli cangiato /In Asino […])’). Furthermore, the text explains that the old woman ‘in a nice fable tells her Psyche’s novella’ (‘con grata favella / Le racconta di Psiche la novella’). As in Boiardo’s translation, we have again the term ‘novella’ for the narrative about Cupid and Psyche.

The same designation of ‘novella’ also appears in other texts, for instance in Diego López de Cortegana’s Castilian translation of Apuleius, which Cervantes might have read. Cortegana translates the passage, concluding the embedded narrative as follows:

The generic label ‘novella’ accompanies the narrative about Cupid and Psyche along its Nachleben, perhaps also in Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares in general and in the scenography of the Casamiento-Coloquio in particular. The image (fig. 3 on p.150) from the Antonio Sancha edition illustrates the narrative situation in Cervantes very well.⁴⁶ In the foreground are the talking dogs Berganza and Scipio, whereas the background is occupied by the patients and the nursing staff of the hospital. Campuzano is one of the patients, perhaps the first figure on the right: the man is in a very difficult position, yet he is looking in the direction of the two dogs.⁴⁷ Now, when set beside an image representing the scenography of the narration of Cupid and Psyche, the two illustrations of course shows differences, but we can also see a number of very interesting similarities. The foreground is occupied by the figures involved in a communicative exchange: a pair of women or two dogs. In the background, we see another character listening to the narrative exchange, an ass in the one case and an ill man in the other. This strange listening figure is to be situated in the past of the narration. Yet, being in the past, this character was not in a position to transcribe what he was hearing. The record or, to put it more precisely, the re-writing, or writing tout court, must, then, have been effectuated after the represented scene. Thus, the text is marked as re-creation or full creation, first by Lucius the man or Campuzano the sane character, and then, ultimately, by the author, be it Apuleius or Cervantes. Hence, our authors insist on the artificial aspect of the transcription of the narratives and simultaneously accentuate their own creative act.

V. Conclusion

This act also leads, of course, to the creation of the collection as a whole, in the case of both the Novelas ejemplares and the Metamorphoses. A more detailed comparison between the two works, taking into account other pieces of Cervantes’ collection, would doubtless constitute an invaluable complementary research topic. Alternatively, one might consider extending the literary comparison to an intermedial approach, including other representations, such as, for instance, Las Meninas by Velázquez (fig. 4), with which the image in the 1783 edition (fig. 3) might very well be related (the figures follow on pp. 150–51).⁴⁸ We might even expand the reflection back to Apuleius’ Golden Ass and perhaps discover other incredible ‘metamorphoses’ of its Nachleben. Kahane, for instance, has offered an inspiring comparison between Apuleius and Las Meninas, explaining that,

This statement establishes a parallel with the Metamorphoses as a whole. But a similar connection could be made concerning the image staged in Las Meninas and the scene of the narration of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius, as represented in Boiardo’s translation or on the engraving by the Master of the Die mentioned above. We can also go further and explore the relation with Cervantes’ Coloquio as well.

The images by the Master of the Die and Velázquez are probably not related to each other, at least not in the same way as that of the Antonio de Sancha edition is to Las Meninas. Yet even a comparison which does not pursue the agenda of attempting to prove a genetic connection might well bring to light an unexpected relationship. This is the case in our short study of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Cervantes’ Coloquio de los perros. The various elements that have been observed in this chapter in the light of the differential comparison pursued here serve, both individually and collectively, to highlight the dialogue between Apuleius’ Ass and Cervantes’ Dogs.

Université de Lausanne, CLE-Centre de recherche ‘Comparer les Littératures en langues Européennes’

Figure 3. Engraving by José Ximeno and Bernardo Barranco in the following edition: Cervantes, Novelas exemplares, Madrid, Antonio Sancha, 1783 © Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, 10816628 P.o.hisp. 45–2, vol. 2, p. 340, urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10607094-7..

Figure 4. Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656 © Museo Nacional del Prado, catalogue number P001174. Reproduced with permission. Accessible online at https://www.museodelprado.es (accessed on 22.03.20).

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¹ I would like to thank Carole Boidin, Raphaële Mouren, Olivier Pedeflous, and Greg Woolf for organizing a wonderful and inspiring conference on ‘The Afterlife of Apuleius’, as well as for the subsequent editorial work on our papers.

² For Apuleius’ text: Apuleius, Metamorphoses, eds D. S. Roberston and O. Sers (Paris 2010); Apuleius, The Golden Ass, trans. P. G. Walsh (Oxford 1994). For Cervantes’ text: M. de Cervantes Saavedra, Novelas ejemplares, ed. H. Sieber, 2 vols (Madrid 2001); Cervantes, Exemplary Stories, trans. C. A. Jones (London 1972). All other translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.

³ A. González de Amezúa y Mayo, Cervantes, creador de la novela corta española: introducción a la edición crítica y comentada de las ‘Novelas ejemplares’, 2 vols (Madrid 1982) II 421. See also the longer discussion in M. de Cervantes Saavedra, El casamiento engañoso y el coloquio de los perros, ed. A. González de Amezúa y Mayo (Madrid 1912) 83–86.

⁴ Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 339.

⁵ For the Novelas, cf. e.g. G. Hainsworth, Les ‘Novelas exemplares’ de Cervantès en France au XVIIe siècle: contribution à l’étude de la nouvelle en France (Paris 1933); F. Carrasco, ‘El coloquio de los perros /v./ El asno de oro: concordancias temáticas y sistemáticas’, Anales cervantinos 21 (1983) 177–200; E. C. Riley, ‘The antecedents of the Coloquio de los perros’, in Negotiating Past and Present: Studies in Spanish Literature for Javier Herrero, ed. D. T. Gies (Charlottesville 1997) 161–75; E. C. Riley, ‘Tradición e innovación en la novelística cervantina’, Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 17.1 (1997) 46–61; A. Guarino, ‘Las huellas del asno: presencia de Apuleyo en la narrativa española del siglo XVI’, in Modelli, memorie, riscriture, ed. G. Grilli (Napoli 2001) 43–59; T. Leuker, ‘Cervantes zwischen Apuleius, Lukian und dem “spanischen Amyot”—Zu Finale und Prolog der Novelas ejemplares’, Romanische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 25 (2001) 409–27; M. Guillemont and M.-B. Requejo Carrió, ‘De asnos y rebuznos. Ambigüedad y modernidad de un diálogo’, Criticón 101 (2007) 57–87; C. García Gual, ‘The ancient novel and the Spanish novel of the Golden Age’, in Fictional Traces: Receptions of the Ancient Novel, eds M. P. Futre Pinheiro and S. J. Harrison, 2 vols (Groningen 2011) I 183–201.

⁶ I am not denying the importance of Quellenforschung: it is a very useful practice that allows for a deeper understanding of the works analysed. Nevertheless, it conceals certain dangers. See, for example, G. Highet, The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western literature (Oxford 1976) 499 (orig. 1949): ‘The false parallel with science caused many more errors and exaggerations in classical study. One odd one was the habit of Quellenforschung, the search for sources, which began as a legitimate inquiry into the material used by a poet, historian, or philosopher, and was pushed to the absurd point at which it was assumed that everything in a poem, even such a poem as the Aeneid, was derived from earlier writers. It is a typical scientific assumption that everything can be explained by synthesis, but it omits the essential artistic fact of creation’.

⁷ F. García Jurado, ‘Tradición frente a recepción clásica: historia frente a estética, autor frente a lector’, Nova Tellus 33.1 (2015) 1–37 (37), cf. also 32 and F. García Jurado, ‘La metamorfosis de la tradición clásica, ayer y hoy’, in Studia classica Caesaraugustana: vigencia y presencia del mundo clásico hoy : XXV años de estudios clásicos en la Universidad de Zaragoza, eds J. Vela Tejada, J. F. Fraile Vicente, and C. Sánchez Mañas (Zaragoza 2015) 69–109.

⁸ R. H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford 2007) and J. H. Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the ‘Golden Ass’: A Study in Transmission and Reception (Princeton-Oxford 2008). Furthermore, see also the interesting studies by F. Küenzlen, Verwandlungen eines Esels. Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ im frühen 16. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg 2005); M. Acocella, ‘L’Asino d’oro’ nel Rinascimento: dai volgarizzamenti alle raffigurazioni pittoriche (Ravenna 2001); and V. Gély, L’invention d’un mythe: Psyché – Allégorie et fiction du siècle de Platon au temps de La Fontaine (Paris 2006); as well as K. Heyerick, ‘Les sens d’une métamorphose: les traductions françaises de L’âne d’or au XVIe siècle’, Revue de littérature comparée 315 (2005) 273–93; and O. Pédeflous, ‘La traduction de L’âne d’or par Guillaume Michel (1517): une contribution à la poétique du roman du xvie siècle’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 107 (2007) 515–25.

⁹ U. Heidmann, ‘La comparaison différentielle comme approche littéraire’, in Nouveaux regards sur le texte littéraire, ed. V. Jouve (Reims 2013) 203–22 (203).

¹⁰ Heidmann, ‘La comparaison’ (n. 9, above) 209–10; author’s emphasis.

¹¹ U. Heidmann, ‘Intertextualité et dialogicité des contes’, in Textualité et intertextualité des contes: Perrault, Apulée, La Fontaine, Lhéritier..., J.–M. Adam and U. Heidmann (Paris 2010) 31–152 (37); author’s emphasis.

¹² U. Heidmann, ‘Que veut et que fait une comparaison différentielle? Propos recueillis par Jean-Michel Adam & David Martens’, Interférences littéraires 21 (2017) 199–226 (200); author’s emphasis.

¹³ L. Núñez, ‘Diálogos animales y humanos entre los perros de Cervantes y el asno de Apuleyo’, in Ficciones animales y animales de ficción en las literaturas hispánicas, eds G. Cordone and M. Kunz (Wien-Zürich 2015) 101–22.

¹⁴ Cf. A. K. Forcione, Cervantes and the Mystery of Lawlessness: A Study of ‘El casamiento engañoso’ y ‘el Coloquio de los perros’ (Princeton 2014) 140; see also N. Alonso Cortés, ‘Los perros de Mahudes’, Revista de filología española 26 (1942) 298–302; González de Amezúa y Mayo, Cervantes (n. 3, above) II 411–13; and González de Amezúa y Mayo’s edition of El casamiento (n. 3, above) 75–80.

¹⁵ For Apuleius’ complex prologue, I only mention the commentaries on book I: A. Scobie, Apuleius, Metamorphoses. (Asinus Aureus), I. A Commentary (Meisenheim am Glan 1975), and, more recently, W. H. Keulen, Lucius Apuleius (Madaurensis), Metamorphoses: Book I, Text, Introd. and Commentary (Groningen 2003); cf. also A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’, eds A. Kahane and A. Laird (Oxford 2001); and L. Núñez, Voix inouïes: étude comparative de l’enchâssement dans ‘Leucippé et Clitophon’ d’Achille Tatius et les ‘Métamorphoses’ d’Apulée, 2 vols (Saarbrücken 2013) I 113–34.

¹⁶ Apul. Met. 1.1.1–2. In order to stay as close as possible to Apuleius’ text, I have inserted modifications in Walsh’s translation at the very beginning of the passage quoted here.

¹⁷ Apul. Met. 1.1.3. Again, I modify Walsh’s translation in order to stay as close as possible to the original. Walsh identifies the Latin ‘ille’ with the narrator, whereas the Latin text is less explicit.

¹⁸ Apul. Met. 1.1.6. Modification in Walsh’s translation in order to avoid talking of specific literary genres such as ‘romance’ and to leave open the question of whether ‘Graecanica’ refers to a translation or to an imitation in the sense of ‘in Greek fashion’.

¹⁹ Cervantes, ‘prólogo’ to the Novelas (n. 2, above) I 50; all translations of the prologue are my own.

²⁰ Cervantes, ‘prólogo’ to the Novelas (n. 2, above) I 50.

²¹ Cervantes, ‘prólogo’ to the Novelas (n. 2, above) I 52.

²² For further references to Boccaccio in Spain, see, e.g., T. González Rolán and P. Saquero Suárez-Somonte, ‘Un nuevo testimonio sobre la presencia de Giovanni Boccaccio en España’, Revista de filología románica 1 (1983) 35–50 (35–37), and the whole issue of Cuadernos de filología italiana número extraorinario 8 (2001): La recepción de Boccaccio en España. Cf. also in general C. Brown Bourland, ‘Boccaccio and the Decameron in Castilian and Catalan Literature’, Revue hispanique 12 (1905) 1–231.

²³ The distinction proposed by J. J. Winkler, Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’s ‘Golden Ass’ (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1985) 135–79 between ‘auctor’/‘Lucius-now’ and ‘actor’/‘Lucius-then’ is very important for the general understanding of the work and will be observed in this paper.

²⁴ Apul. Met. 1.2.5.

²⁵ Apul. Met. 1.3.2–3.

²⁶ Cf. also Leuker, ‘Cervantes zwischen Apuleius’ (n. 5, above) 410–12.

²⁷ Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 294.

²⁸ Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 299.

²⁹ Apul. Met. 11.30.5.

³⁰ Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 355.

³¹ Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 359.

³² Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 359.

³³ Apul. Met. 11.30.5.

³⁴ Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 359.

³⁵ On the level of their importance, the centrality of both narratives is unquestionable, yet the situation is rather different concerning their position in the two works. In Apuleius, the narrative about Cupid and Psyche is at the centre of the eleven books (4.28–6.25). The situation is slightly different in Cervantes, since, quantitatively speaking, the Cañizares-episode appears rather in the second half of the Coloquio de los perros. However, looked at from the perspective of the masters mentioned by Berganza, the passage is exactly between the first five and the last five. Of course, the situation changes if one considers the Novelas ejemplares as a whole: the Coloquio is not in the middle of the collection but at its end. Yet this is also an important strategic position and therefore betrays centrality in another sense.

³⁶ For a detailed analysis of the narrative about Cupid and Psyche, and for further bibliographical references, see Núñez, Voix (n. 15, above) II 287–387.

³⁷ Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 339.

³⁸ D. Maingueneau, Le discours littéraire: paratopie et scène d’énonciation (Paris 2004) 192. The first to relate the concept of scenography to Apuleius was Heidmann: see, e.g., U. Heidmann, ‘La (re)configuration des genres dans les littératures européennes: l’exemple des contes’, Colloquium Helveticum 40 (2009) 91–104; ‘Intertextualité’ (n. 11, above) 57–65; ‘Zur poetologischen und intertextuellen Bedeutung der Metamorphosen des Apuleius für Jean de La Fontaine und Charles Perrault’, Würzburger Jahrbücher für Altertumswissenschaft, Neue Folge 37 (2013) 157–90; and ‘L’efficacité heuristique du concept de scénographie pour l’étude comparative des contes’, in Analyse du discours et dispositifs d’énonciation: autour des travaux de Dominique Maingueneau, eds J. Angermuller and G. Philippe (Limoges 2015) 147–56.

³⁹ Apul. Met. 6.25.1.

⁴⁰ Cf. Heidmann, ‘Intertextualité’ (n. 11, above) 56; cf. also ‘Comment faire un conte moderne avec un conte ancien? Perrault en dialogue avec Apulée et La Fontaine’, Littérature 153 (2009) 19–35 (21) and ‘La (re)configuration’ (n. 37, above) 94–95.

⁴¹ The complex embedded structure of the passage distances and artificializes the speech about the human origin of the two dogs. It can be summarized as follows (Cervantes >) Campuzano > Berganza > Cañizares > Camacha (the witch quoted by Cañizares).

⁴² Cervantes, Novelas (n. 2, above) II 346. Slight modification of Jones’ translation, which renders ‘jamás visto’ as ‘unprecedented’.

⁴³ For Perrault, inter alia see especially Heidmann, ‘Intertextualité’ (n. 11, above) 55–63, and for the Grimms, who quote Cervantes’ passage and use the Spanish term conseja as equivalent of their Märchen, see L. Núñez, ‘Les commentaires paratextuels des Kinder- und Hausmärchen, gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm’, Féeries 9 (2012) 197–247 (216–17 and 245).

⁴⁴ From the perspective of the dialogue between Apuleius and Cervantes, note also the presence of a dog in front of the two feminine figures; cf. Heidmann, ‘Zur poetologischen’ (n. 38, above) 163, n. 11.

⁴⁵ D. López de Cortegana, Apuleyo. ‘El asno de oro’. Traducción, ed. C. García Gual (Madrid 2010) 201.

⁴⁶ For a general study of the illustration of Cervantes’ text, see P. W. Manning, ‘Present dogs, absent witches: illustration and interpretation of “El coloquio de los perros”’, Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 27.2 (Fall 2007 [2008]) 125–54.

⁴⁷ Of course, the figure on the right side behind the first group might also represent Campuzano, as the man seems to look to the dogs as well. However, since the first figure is nearer and even leans over in order to see, and especially to hear, the two talking dogs, it seems to be he who corresponds to Campuzano.

⁴⁸ There are various parallels between the engraving by Ximeno and Barranco on the Coloquio and Velázquez’ Las Meninas: Velázquez’s dog in the foreground is transformed into two dogs by Ximeno/Barranco, there are different levels behind or above the dogs, one of which has a man standing in the door frame in a similar position on both images, or the two ceiling lamps; on the right, there are windows in both images.

⁴⁹ A. Kahane, ‘Antiquity’s future: writing, speech, and representation in the Prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’, eds A. Kahane and A. Laird (Oxford 2001) 231–41 (239).