N. argues that Apuleius is very much aware of the etymologies of the words he uses and accordingly utilises puns, often neologisms, in order to create etymological jokes in his novel. Consequently, she unearths many hitherto undiscussed puns and word games in the Metamorphoses and puts them alongside the ones already noted, offering the first systematic overview of Apuleius' etymological jokes and puns, thus adding to the ever increasing discussion of Apuleius' variety of lexis and style. She deliberately excludes non-etymological puns like paronomasia or assonance, for example Met. 9.14 pervicax … pertinax, though the distinction from para-etymological puns, for example Met. 6.19 atra atria, can be fluid.
She concentrates almost entirely on the novel (though Apologia and Florida appear, too), but her thesis would have been strengthened or at least tested if more comparative material from Apuleius' philosophical works had been drawn into consideration. It has been noted before that Apuleius' style changes according to his genre; N. agrees, but has not really looked at the philosophical texts (De Platone has one index entry, De mundo three, of De deo Socratis only ‘False Preface’ 4 gets a mention, but N. intends to return to the work in the future). Interestingly, this seems to be paralleled in the use of Plautine language which is much reduced in the philosophical works and most prominent in the novel, so a pattern of linguistic games restricted by genre seems to emerge for Apuleius. Apuleius' delight in wordplay is easily traceable in the Apologia (e.g. 34–5, where Apuleius creates jokes on pseudo-etymological fish names). Methodologically, N. often uses the by now well-established links to Plautine language and Plautine allusions to establish and reconstruct linguistic jokes. Given Apuleius' tendency to connect word play with genre and content, it is interesting that N. argues (p. 9) that Apuleius' style remains the same throughout the Isis book Met. 11 – a useful contribution to our understanding of the enigma of Met. 11, although not entirely surprising.
Chapter 1 offers a programmatic discussion of Met. 6.10, where Venus chides Psyche and commands her to sort grains. The etymological pun with frugem periclitabor on seruus frugi and fruges, N. argues persuasively, anticipates Psyche's task of sorting grain. Encouraged by this, she discusses the function of ancient etymology as determined less by linguistic scholarship than by literary suggestibility and its effects. Accordingly, N. uses ‘etymological jokes’ in this ancient pseudo-etymological sense and observes that they cluster around an author's interest and themes; in Apuleius' case, they are typically linked with Plautine imitation, a reliance on idiomatic phrases, repetitions of similar effects and certain accumulations of puns in the same place. Apuleius' predilections, she argues, are autobiographically determined: Apuleius' preference for this style derives from his life as a Romanised African, his bilingualism (with Punic as his mother tongue) which first got him interested in the workings of the Latin language, leading to a more analytical approach to Latin than native speakers might have had. N. compares this with the discussion of Greek and Latin by the speaker of the Metamorphoses prologue, and does not really distinguish between Lucius, the Prologue speaker, and (later) Apuleius himself in this respect.
The rest of the book (Chapter 2) consists of a systematic analysis of various types of word games, from figurae etymologicae, polyptota, hapax legomena, bilingual puns with Greek and Latin, metaphors taken literally, to enallage and wilful double meanings. In each subsection N. discusses all entries from the novel. The word games may be primarily funny (Met. 1.8 scortum scorteum) or colloquial (Met. 10.5 forte fortuna), based on oxymora (Met. 5.26 copia … inopia) or possibly ad hoc hapax legomena (Met. 2.25 repente introrepens). N. offers very short basic interpretations of the puns, identifies and classifies them, occasionally giving some succinct detail about context, and documenting their occurrence in other Latin literature or their uniqueness.
In the chapter on double meanings of words many of the instances N. discusses are already recognised, for example Met. 1.21 the pun on Milo as a primus, i.e. an eminent society member, but also the first person encountered in Hypata as he lives outside the city walls. Still, it is good to have a substantial part of these word games gathered together and discussed, and N. gives effective interpretations of some puns and how first and second time readers might understand a passage and specific words differently.
Given the many detailed analyses, the absence of a conclusion providing an overview of Apuleius' style and how our perception of it has changed through N.'s work is keenly felt. There is much in N.'s book on the form of word games, and it has to be seen in future whether they also bear a function beyond style and texture, as they are specifically linked to the distinctive language of the novel. Accordingly, the book offers an enticement to scholars to widen the scope for looking at wordplay in Apuleius in a wider sense, beyond etymology, and to investigate how word games of all types function beyond witticisms, for example as characterisation tools or to create thematic links between separate passages of the novel. This is a very useful book, lavishly indexed, which further opens up an aspect of Apuleian language in which scholars have recently become more interested, and N. has assembled a well-documented treasure trove for scholars to dip into and use.
