Abstract
B. Diane Lipsett,
Desiring Conversion: Hermas, Thecla, Aseneth
, Oxford University Press: Oxford and New York, 2011; 208 pp.: 9780199754519, £45.00/$74.00 (hbk)
What sets Lipsett’s book apart from recent studies of ancient novelistic literature is the claim that the narratives she considers ‘all endorse renunciation of erotic consummation … but not the transformative possibilities of desire itself’ (p. 5). Desire is not simply a temptation to be overcome on the way to a new identity, but an energy that also inspires new affiliations and actions. And the dynamics of ‘conversion’, she argues, are primarily symbolized by reconfigurations of gendered roles and tropes, such as virginity and marriage.
Lipsett’s book is organized into five chapters. The introduction presents a case for reading three ancient texts as ‘conversion tales’. The texts are familiar to scholars of early Jewish and Christian texts and the ancient novel alike: The Shepherd of Hermas, The Acts of Paul and Thecla and Joseph and Aseneth. Each text, Lipsett observes, ‘tells a story of change in the protagonist’s identity partly by treating desire and self-restraint, passion and renunciation, as opposed categories’ (p. 4). Key to her reading is the idea that conversion is less an ‘inner’ change of consciousness than a change in social identity constructed through narrative.
In each chapter, Lipsett pairs each text with a different theoretical approach to issues of desire and subjectivity. In Chapter 2, she reads The Shepherd of Hermas alongside Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality. Like the philosophical texts discussed by Foucault, Hermas places a great deal of emphasis on improving one’s self through strict scrutiny of one’s desires. Through a meticulous parsing of the text’s dialogues and visions, Lipsett argues that the tension between desire and restraint drives the process of Hermas’ transformation, which ends with the cultivation of a ‘manly’ desire for virtuous deeds.
In Chapter 3, Lipsett looks at The Acts of Paul and Thecla with the help of psychoanalytical theories of desire. Holding in tension Thelca’s role as both subject and object of desire, Lipsett reads Thecla’s own longing as a ‘disintegration and reconstitution of her social self’ (p. 85). Defying easy classification, Thecla is a ‘transvestite’ woman in a man’s cloak who is both courageous and vulnerable, self-disciplined and subject to the violence of others.
In Chapter 4, Lipsett draws on a work of ancient literary criticism, Longinus’ On the Sublime, to read Joseph and Aseneth. Exploring the poetic language that surrounds Aseneth, Lipsett argues that symbolic imagery works to evoke the disruptive experience of repentance as well as the recuperative, even ‘sublime’, experience of desire transformed. Ultimately, she argues that Aseneth’s erotic desire for Joseph induces her conversion. Symbolically, Aseneth’s virginity marks both the boundaries between cultures and their crossing.
Desiring Conversion ends with a succinct, but perhaps too brief, conclusion. More might have been said, for example, about the implications of the gender transformations Lipsett describes in each text: are these texts subverting or reinscribing broader cultural codes? Overall, however, this is a sophisticated contribution that offers new insights and suggestions for further research. Highly recommended for scholars interested in early Christian and Jewish narratives and gender and desire in ancient Greco-Roman culture.