Phaedrus, Martial, and Apuleius are aware that their works belong to a ‘low’ literary genre, and they all react with self-ironical understatement and constant dialogue with the reader. This strategy of defence comes to a crucial point in certain passages where a metaliterary intersection with ‘high’ genres is proposed: Phaedr. 4,7; Mart. 8,3; Apul. met. 10,2. The paper focuses on these passages and examines the meaning and function that the shift from ‘sock’ to ‘buskin’ – to use their metaphor – has for the three authors. This comparison shows that Apuleius does not share Phaedrus’ and Martial’s open irony and polemic against lofty, ‘anti-realistic’ poetry, and does not exclude the interference of sublime genres in the open form of the novel. However, in Apuleius, tragedy is reduced to the expressive code of the novel, and the veiled trace of authorial irony confirms the ‘genre metamorphosis’ in act.