Introduction -- Roundtable Myth and the Novel -- Myth and the Novel: Introductory Remarks and Comments on the Roundtable Discussion -- Myth in the Novel: Some Observations -- The Literary Myth in the Novel -- Myths in the Novel: Gender, Violence and Power -- Novel and Mythology - Contribution to a Round Table -- Greek Novel and Local Myth -- Mythical Repertoire and Its Functions in Apuleius' Metamorphoses -- Storyline, Poetics and Religion -- Love, Mysteries and Literary Tradition: New Experiences and Old Frames -- The Tale of a Dream: Oneiros and Mythos in the Greek Novel -- From Mystery to Initiation: A Mytho-Ritual Poetics of Love and Sex in the Ancient Novel - even in Apuleius' Golden Ass? -- From the Legend of Cupid and Psyche to the Novel of Mélusine: Myth, Novel and Twentieth Century Adaptations -- Apuleius and Cupid and Psyche: Anthropological, Christian and Philosophical Perspectives -- Puella Virgo: Rites of Passage in Apuleius' Metamorphoses -- Gnostic Variations on the Tale of Cupid and Psyche -- Apuleius and Christianity: The Novelist-Philosopher in front of a New Religion -- Ritual, Myth and Intertextuality -- Donkey Gone to Hell: A Katabasis Motif in Apuleius' Metamorphoses -- Iphigenia Revisited: Heliodorus' Aethiopica and the 'Der Tod und das Mädchen' Pattern -- 'Non humana viscera sed centies sestertium comesse' (Petr. Sat. 141,7): Philomela and the Cannibal Heredipetae in the Crotonian Section of Petronius' Satyricon -- Religious Imagery, Cult, Mystery and Art -- False Fortuna: Religious Imagery and the Painting-Gallery Episode in the Satyricon -- The Bees of Artemis Ephesia and the Apocalyptic Scene in Joseph and Aseneth -- Magic, Comic Reversal and Healing.

Shamans and Charlatans: Magic, Mixups, Literary Memory in Apuleius' Golden Ass Book 3 -- Lucius's Rose: Symbolic or Sympathetic Cure? -- General Index -- Index locorum -- About the Authors.