Reading Notes: Cupid and Psyche, Reading A

Hello!

For this week's first reading I chose to read Cupid and Psyche from the list of classical readings. This story is actually a part of a larger novel, The Golden Ass, by Apuleius and translated by Tony Kline. In this excerpt, the fairy-tale of Cupid and Psyche is being told to a kidnapped young woman by an old woman who works with the thieves that kidnapped the first, making it a story nested within another. 

This kind of nesting creates an interesting dynamic between the story and the reader because the reader must not only filter everything they read through the perspective of the old woman telling it but also look at it from that of the young woman hearing it. This adds a layer of intrigue to the fairy-tale that might otherwise not be there by calling into question the motivation of the narrator and the effect that it may be having on the fictional audience. I think that this is an interesting plot device when you look at the fairy-tale as a standalone piece and it would be interesting to practice it in my own storytelling this week. 

Something else of interest to me, is that this story involves the Goddess Venus, like the last story I made notes on, Pygmalion. In this story though she is not answering prayers but aiming to ruin the life of Psyche. I wonder if in the future or possibly for this week’s story, I could somehow weave the previous story I wrote together with a new one based around this fairy-tale. 

On another note, I thought it was interesting that although Venus is seeking out “revenge” on Psyche for taking the attention and praise that should be hers, nowhere in the story does it say the Psyche was seeking out such praise or advancing the idea that she was the new Venus. Instead it seems like Psyche is just the powerless object of people’s obsession which makes Venus’s plot not only cruel but also unwarranted. Luckily her son, Cupid, that is sent to do her bidding has mercy and his own agenda. The misaligned intents, actions, and power of Venus and Cupid make the story interesting as well on a level one higher than the relationship between Cupid and Psyche. This is even more interesting if you consider the parallels that the old woman telling the story might be trying to make between Psyche’s situation and the kidnapped woman’s. If I were going to include the nested story design in my story this week, I think it would be fun to try something like this as well, although I would probably end up being a little more heavy-handed with it. 

Well those are my big notes for the first half of this story. I am looking forward to reading the second half, as well as incorporating some of these style elements into my story this week.

Bibliography: 

Cupid and Psyche from The Golden Ass, by Apuleius Translated by Tony Kline

Photo of the "Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss" statue crafted by Antonio Canova (1787) Displayed in the Louvre Museum, Paris taken by -Reji posted to Flickr