Bodies, bonds and boundaries : corporeality and social status in the Latin novels

In this thesis, I explore how the authors of the Latin novels present personhood in the relationship between bodies and status. Through the body, they present status as unstable, reflecting how the texts themselves mingle ‘high’ literary allusions with ‘low’ comic scenes. To my knowledge, no previous scholar has explored these works in this way. I argue that Petronius and Apuleius reflect the fragility of the social hierarchy through the body, but maintain the status quo, reflecting how their elite identities are bound to their roles as slaveholders. I highlight the significance of the system of enslavement and the social hierarchy in approaching these texts, understanding how the authors use the body to define and deny personhood. Using material sources, I bring another dimension to my analysis of bodies and status. In addition to close readings of relevant passages of the novels, at strategic points I compare how bodies and status are represented in material culture and the texts. This allows me to consider a broader range of embodied experiences across the spectrum of social status, showing what is distinctive about the depiction of bodies and status in the texts. I find that Apuleius and Petronius use the body to present status as unstable. They provide little or no reassurance that an elite identity will be easily recognised or restored when high-status characters experience a loss of status. Appearance is unreliable, elite bodies are violable, and power dynamics – particularly in erotic relationships – shift frequently. This instability of social status may disquiet an elite Roman reader, the assumed audience of these texts, but it does nothing to empower low-status readers. The permeable boundaries of the bodies represented in these texts reflect elite anxieties about blurred social boundaries, presenting social mobility as ridiculous, horrifying, and – at times – inevitable.