"The Metamorphosis of Apuleius traces two millennia of changes in the major inserted tale in the second century Metamorphoses (or Golden Ass), the only classical Latin novel to survive in a complete text. This most charming "Tale of Cupid and Psyche" was both popular in its own day and became the subject of allegorical intepretation into the Dark Ages. However, it became lost in the Middle Ages, probably in part because of the parent novel's fairly explicit eroticism and militant paganism (not counting its possible anti-Christian jibes). Resurfacing in the Renaissance from a single surviving manuscript, it again became the subject of allegorization and spawned a large number of translations and adaptations which have continued up to the present day, with C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces being only one of the more notable recent retellings."--BOOK JACKET.