Le conte de Psyché et Cupidon, témoin du folklore d'Afrique du nord

Résumé éditeur

Based on approaches accepted in Classical Philology as well as on folkloristics, this book defends the theory of Émile Dermenghem, who affirms the Amazigh ("Berber") origin of the tale of Psyche and Cupid. In North Africa, are the oral counterparts of the Latin narrative of Apuleius (ATU 425), mere traces of a European influences? Is it only by affectation that the author, born in Madauros (currently Mdaourouch), recognizes himself as "half-Numidian and half-Getulian" (Apol. 24)? Is this passage the only indication of Africanity in the work? Where did the author find the intellectual legitimacy to insert a 'barbaric' tale into his novel? Is it likely that the Latin narrative generated the oral tales of North Africa? Finally, what is the part of the imperial culture and that of the provincial culture in the middle of the Metamorphoses? The answers to these questions allow the investivation to gradually reconstitute a unique poetic in its time, because it was based on the movement between Latin, Greek, and African (Libyan) cultures of which Apuleius is the heir