Faulkner’s Reception of Apuleius’ The Golden Ass in The Reivers

Faulkner's posthumous novel, The Reivers, has been gently dismissed by scholars and critics as no more than its subtitle claims, A Reminiscence. Although the new millennium has seen a new appreciation for Faulkner's later novels, The Reivers is still perceived as a slightly fictionalized comic memoir romanticizing the early life of the author in the pre-civil rights American South. This volume takes this dismissal of The Reivers to task for failing to appreciate its employment of the Apuleian narrative of life-altering metamorphosis to offer, as his literary farewell, hope for humanity's self-redemption.

Vernon L. Provencal studies the reception of The Golden Ass in The Reivers as comic novels of moral katabasis (wilful descent into the lawless underworld) and providential anabasis
Read more