C.S. Lewis's greatest novel is based on a variation of a myth told in Ovid and Apuleius, the love of the god of love (Cupid) for the soul (Psyche). The divinization of erotic love was present in the ancient world, but it was only one heresy among many. C.S. Lewis observed in his work The Allegory of Love that it becomes the singular feature of the medieval courtly love tradition, whose conventions remain with us to this day.
Lewis is at pains to demonstrate how erotic love is related to divine Love in this myth directed at his contemporary (largely agnostic) audience. For Lewis, the real God of Love is Jesus, the lamb who was slain who takes away the sins of the world.
Lewis writes from the perspective of an agnostic old Queen, Orual, writing from within her pagan context. Orual writes bitterly against the gods of her culture, whom she blames for her greatest losses.
All the same, her retrospective portrait of the religion of her culture and its contrast with the wisdom of her beloved Greek teacher, a man nicknamed the Fox, exposes many contradictions in her narrative.
Lewis uses the myth of Cupid and Psyche to illustrate the theme of love in relation to two primary motifs, the blood sacrifice central to the life and prosperity of her kingdom of Glome and the light of reason.
It is a connection his narrator cannot see however plain it is to the reader.
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