The story about Charite as the closest context of "Cupid and Psyche"

This paper explores the composition of the central part of the novel 'Metamorphoses'. The central part consists of the tale of Cupid and Psyche and story about Charite that surrounds the former tale. Both of these inserted stories tell of pure and sincere love in a novel where the main plot and other inserted stories tell of adultery, murder, deceit and betrayal. ‘Cupid and Psyche’ stands out from the background of the novel to such an extent that a separate body of research literature is devoted to this tale. Apuleius' “Metamorphoses”, as researchers have long recognised, has a detailed structure and composition. For instance, the story of Lucius, the protagonist of ‘Metamorphoses’, is seen as parallel to ‘Cupid and Psyche’. It has long been stated that both these stories tell about the divinisation of a mortal. The many parallels between these stories are in favour of this. Nevertheless, the story about Charite, being the closest context of ‘Cupid and Psyche’, the ‘frame’ framing this tale, has been considered in connection with the tale of Cupid and Psyche only superficially as a contrast to the tale, where all parallels turn out to be a deception, because Psyche has a happy ending and Charite a tragic one. However, if the composition of 'Metamorphoses' is assumed to be meaningful and the central position of 'Cupid and Psyche' in the novel is not considered accidental, then not only the global setting of the tale in the form of the story of Lucius, but also the immediate setting of the tale is not without significance and its analysis may reveal a different semantic connotation of Cupid and Psyche in the context of the whole novel. This paper examines the subtleties of the relationship between Charite's story and ‘Cupid and Psyche’ and the tale of Cupid and Psyche as a story inserted twice in 'Metamorphoses'.