Voltaire, La Pucelle d'Orleans, 1762

Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, the only completely extant ironic and first-person narrator novel from antiquity, inspired authors throughout the centuries, in many different modes of reception, ranging from philosophical contemplations to a series of erotic stories. Voltaire’s novel is a scandalous and somewhat erotic burlesque about Jeanne D’Arc, the Maid of Orleans (la pucelle), written ca. 1730, first published ca. 1755; Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) at first denied being the author, and only in 1762 did he publish an edition of the text under his own name. The Brotherton has this edition. The preface claims to be written by a Benedictine called Apuleius Risorius, or Laughable Apuleius, an obvious pseudonym, and gives a complicated story of the text’s discovery and publication. Voltaire uses similar false documentation in his Candide. Apuleius Risorius functions as the fake learned editor, who places the much-praised “anonymous” story into its literary context, but also as a literary marker: this novel is fictitious, facetious, erotic and funny. Psyche and Cupid themselves appear in the text briefly in an image describing the love of Charles VII of France and his mistress Agnes, and the bawdier elements of Voltaire’s text also take inspiration from Apuleius’ frequent erotic tales included in the Metamorphoses.

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