An Ojibwe Daphnis and Chloe: David Treuer's The Translation of Dr. Apelles

In The Translation of Dr. Apelles, Ojibwe novelist David Treuer creates a reclusive scholar named Dr. Apelles who translates a newly discovered Native American manuscript. This manuscript turns out to be an Ojibwe version of Longus's second-century Greek novel Daphnis and Chloe. As he translates the work, Dr. Apelles falls in love with a beautiful woman named Campaspe, just as his namesake, the famous Hellenistic painter, did. Treuer's novel serves as a postmodern exemplum of his literary theory that Native literature should be judged by aesthetic rather than anthropological criteria and that all reality is a text to be “translated.”