Religious Feasting in Apuleius's Metamorphoses: Appetite for Change?

Abstract

The phenomenon of religious feasting in Apuleius's Metamorphoses has been largerly overlooked or played down by scholarship so far. In fact, food and feasting constitute a significant part of the last, so-called Isis Book of the Metamorphoses, all too often reduced to the story of a more or less ascetic religious experience. The significance of shared meals at the ultimate stage of Apuleius's narrative has consequences for our interpretation of the Metamorphoses in general and allows some conjectures about its potential secondary reception through recitals.