summary: Apuleius’ novel, The Golden Ass , is well known for the elements of quotidian realism it contains. The perspective of the donkey, the lowliest beast of burden, introduces the reader to a world of slaves, gardeners, barbers and cooks whose lives are seldom seen in such detail. In this article I argue that the space the novel gives to these figures of quotidian Roman experience is not limited to human subjects, but extends to the everyday objects against which these sub-elites measure their object-status. Everyday objects move from the background into the foreground of this text and repeatedly take on a life of their own. Beds, door hinges and storage jars, items that usually remain invisible in a literary text, break the bounds of expectation when they are turned upside down, burst their bolts or are given voice by containing unexpected human visitors. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology , I argue that Apuleius’ depiction of the repurposing of these objects feeds into the novel’s interest in subverting hard and fast distinctions between subject and object in its extended meditation on the experience of subservient and colonized subjects living under the rule of Roman masters.
Francesca K. A. Martelli (Sun,) studied this question.