ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical method for reading Latin literature within an embodied framework which takes into account that certain aspects of cognition, including thoughts, feelings and behaviours, are dependent upon or influenced by the body beyond the brain. Asking the question: How involved is the body in structuring classical Latin texts?, I identify ubiquitous processes of figuration that demonstrate the body playing an important part in the performance of knowledge and the expression of sentiment in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Identifying paradigms, correlating emotional schemas, and measuring and comparing sentiment, I allow the narrative to assert consequence, identify influence and qualify relevance. By demonstrating how a self-reflexive network of reciprocal sympathies creates a dialogue for communicating norms and values, I draw attention to the tendency of human expression to (re)instantiate the social world through the enactment of bodily experience. I hope to encourage readers to (re)consider how deeply embedded is bodily knowledge in the expression and experience of subjective realities, as well as how that knowledge is transmitted across texts and contexts.
