| Summary: | Till We Have Faces is widely regarded by admirers of C.S. Lewis as his best work of fiction, and also the most enigmatic. While it is not obviously didactic, most readers have a sense that a meaning lurks in it that cannot be ascertained by a conventional analysis of the plot, the observations of the narrator and her developing awareness of her own motives. It is argued here that Lewis, who was familiar with allegorical readings of the tale of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius and with at least some later imitations, may have been sufficiently influenced by these precedents to conceive his own tale as a partial allegory, in which Orual represents the fleshly or somatic element in humanity, sharing both in the labours of the soul and in its ultimate redemption.
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