Which myth supplied the central story for C.S. Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces?

The myth of Cupid and Psyche supplies the central story for C.S. Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces. Published in 1956, the book retells the classical myth from the perspective of Orual, a princess of Glome.

In the ancient story, Psyche is taken to a mysterious husband whom she is forbidden to see, while her jealous sisters influence her to break the prohibition. Lewis keeps the recognizable pattern but transforms the setting, characters, and psychological emphasis.

The novel’s subtitle, A Myth Retold, signals its relationship to classical mythology. Unlike a straightforward retelling, it explores jealousy, love, accusation, self-knowledge, and the ways people construct stories about their own suffering.

Till We Have Faces was Lewis’s last completed novel. Readers sometimes mistake it for a Narnia book because it is also a mythic fantasy, but it is an independent work with an ancient Mediterranean setting rather than the world of Narnia.