Though it plainly seeks royal patronage by praising Versailles, Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon may have a further contemporary colour in recalling in both its setting and its characters La Fontaine’s previous patron, the disgraced and imprisoned royal minister Nicholas Fouquet. In La Fontaine’s adaptation, the story of Cupid and Psyche is much expanded, and surrounded by a frame narrative of four friends in contemporary Paris, who go to the palace-park of Versailles (then under construction) to hear one of them tell the story of Cupid and Psyche. This essay examines Jean de La Fontaine’s Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon of 1669 and its adaptation into French and a contemporary cultural setting of the celebrated two-book inserted tale of Cupid and Psyche from Apuleius’ Latin novel Metamorphoses (Apul.
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