Apuleius' and Augustine prose style : rupture or continuity?

I focus on the link between Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Augustine’s Confessions in a linguistic-stylistic perspective, assuming that Aug. read the Metamorphoses before he wrote his Confessions. I will follow suggestions made by two previous scholars concerning Ap.’s style: Callebat, who observed that Ap.’s style aims to renew and rewrite a too banal and ‘exterior’ vision of the world; von Albrecht, who examined some devices, which grant to Ap.’s style detachment from common language and seem to invite the reader to grasp a deeper meaning in the story. Among such stylistic devices, I will take into consideration those common to Ap. and Aug., to make the point that in both cases these devices are used to tell a story that bears a meaning which is more profound than the literal one, a story where facts are intended – even in their linguistic-stylistic form – to convey a (more or less explicit) invitation to conversion.