The Metamorphosis of Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche, Beauty and the Beast, King Kong (review)

Reviews1 71 or, conversely, in staging for the modern reader of performance. Susan L. Fischer Bucknell University Accardo, Pasquale. The Metamorphosis ofApuleius: Cupid and Psyche, Beauty and the Beast, King Kong. Madison /Teaneck and London: Fairleigh Dickinson UP/Associated UR 2002. 323 pp. Pasquale Accardo has written a fascinating book that traces the textual influence ofApuleius's Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass over the centuries, right up to its cinematographic enshrinement in Hollywood's adaptation of the Cupid and Psyche myth in the 1933 classic King Kong. Although the details of the myth's textual history and adaptability over time should prove of interest to Hispanists, what has justified this brief review in the Bulletin is the translation into English of Calderón's JVi Amor se libra de amor, which appears in Appendix I1 pp. 110-59. Timothy S. Woolsey has afforded Hispanists the opportunity of considering this beautiful play for inclusion in courses on the Comedia in translation as well as in Renaissance drama courses , where the Spanish court theater of the Baroque period is frequently absent or ignored due to the lack of translated texts. We owe a debt of gratitude to Pasquale Accardo for his efforts to trace this enchanting myth from its origin in the second century right up to the present and to Timothy S. Woolsey for his contribution to the popularization of this little-known but, nonetheless, beautiful play by Calderón de la Barca. Thomas A. O'Connor Binghamton University ...