Top 9 Cupid / Eros in Literature

1. Poetic Theology of Love: Cupid in Medieval and Renaissance Literature

by Thomas Hyde. University of Delaware Press. From the publisher: "This book argues that current criticism tends to take the mythology of love either too innocently or too skeptically and therefore distorts the complex roles played by the god of love in longer narrative poems and discursive works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Illustrated."

2. Cupid and Psyche

by M. Charlotte Craft and Kinuko Y. Craft. HarperCollins. From the publisher: "Perhaps the greatest love story of all, Cupid and Psyche is unsurpassed in its richness and drama. Marie Craft's lively, suspenseful retelling of this classic Greek myth will appeal to young and old alike. And these legendary lovers have inspired forty lush luminous paintings by award-winning artist Kinuko Craft."

3. Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

by C. S. Lewis, Fritz Eichenberg (Illustrator). Harcourt. From the publisher: "This tale of two princesses--one beautiful and one unattractive--and of the struggle between sacred and profane love is Lewis's reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche and one of his most enduring works."

4. Tale of Cupid and Psyche: An Illustrated History

by Sonia Cavicchioli, and Susan Scott (Translator). George Braziller Publishers, a Norton affiliate. From the publisher: "The passionate love story of a god and an exquisitely beautiful mortal woman, the myth of Cupid and Psyche has fascinated Western culture since the Middle Ages. First appearing as a long aside in Apuleius's The Golden Ass in the second century AD, this romance has inspired countless works of art in an astonishingly wide range of media."

5. Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche

by Apuleius, Edwin J. Kenney (Editor). Cambridge University Press. From the publisher: "This edition of the allegorical fairytale, the first with a full commentary in English to appear for eighty years, comprises a Latin text with facing translation, making the edition more accessible to students of comparative literature."

6. Cupid and Psyche: An Adaptation of the Story in the Golden Ass of Apuelius

by Maurice G. Balme, and James H. Morwood (Editor). Oxford University Press. From the publisher: "The story of Cupid and Psyche is part of The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses, a Latin novel by Apuleius (second century A.D.). It is both a charming fairytale and an allegory of the search of the Soul for happiness and fulfillment."

7. Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Poetry

by Theresa Lynn Tinkle. Stanford University Press. From the publisher: "Medieval Venuses and Cupids analyzes the transformations of the love deities in later Middle English Chaucerian poetry, academic Latin discourses on classical myth (including astrology, natural philosophy, and commentaries on classical Roman literature), and French conventions that associate Venus and Cupid with Ovidian arts of love."

8. Fable of Cupid and Psyche (1795)

by Thomas Taylor. Kessinger Publishing. From the publisher: "This fable was extracted from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, originally written in Latin, to which is added a poetical paraphrase on the Speech of Diotima in the Banquet of Plato; Four Hymns, etc., with an introduction, in which the meaning of the fable is unfolded. Due to the age of the original facsimile, some pages are spotty or faded. A large portion of the text is written in Old English."

9. Cupid and Psyche and Other Tales from the Golden Ass

by Apuleius. Kessinger Publishing. From the publisher: "No one can have read or heard popular tales without meeting minor elements of all tales, such as the jealous sister familiar to us in the story of Cinderella, and the cruel stepmother or taskmaster who sets the tasks. It is in the combination that the artist shows his power; and of the tales of the world, it is hardly too much to say that this tale of Cupid and Psyche is the most beautiful and charming."