ECHOES OF APULEIUS’ NOVEL IN MARY TIGHE’S PSYCHE:
ROMANTIC IMAGINATION AND SELF-FASHIONING

REGINE MAY

Mary Tighe (1772–1810) wrote a Spenserian adaptation (first published in 1805) of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ in six cantos: Psyche or The Legend of Love.¹ This paper argues that despite Tighe’s claims to know little of the rest of the Metamorphoses, there is ample evidence from her poem that she read Apuleius’ novel beyond ‘Cupid and Psyche’, especially in cantos III–VI, which are less close to the story as set out in Apuleius. This explicit denial of much knowledge of Apuleius beyond ‘Cupid and Psyche’ appears in a letter to a close friend and mentor: ‘I know little of it I assure you but my own story’.² However, her claim here is both part and consequence of Tighe’s self-fashioning as a poet. In the preface to Psyche (xiii– xiv), she goes to great lengths to reassert her own originality, denying knowledge of other imitations of Apuleius, who alone is her model, and only in the first two cantos:³

Taking this claim to originality literally may be one of the reasons why English scholars tend not to study Tighe’s reception of ancient texts, especially not beyond the narrower focus of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ rather than the Met. as a whole,⁴ have not so far critically tested Tighe’s claims of independence from Apuleius, and have not analysed the similarities and differences to Apuleius in all six cantos. But Tighe was an excellent Latinist, capable of reading and using the whole novel.⁵ My intention is to show that this is precisely what she did.

Educated by her formidable Methodist mother, and encouraged by her husband, who loved the Classics⁶ and taught her to read Latin, Tighe was a voracious reader; her reading journal, kept from 1806 to 1809, lists over 200 items.⁷ She was well versed in Latin, French, Italian, and other languages, and liberally cited poems in these languages in her work. She was familiar with Catullus, Horace, Tibullus, and Aulus Gellius, and in the footnotes to her own works she cites authors from Valerius Flaccus to Achilles Tatius.⁸

Her motto for Psyche sets the scene for her Latinate readership. It is a quotation of Martial 10.35.8, a poem about the poetess Sulpicia: ‘Sed castos docet et pios amores’.⁹ She thus claims the ability of female authors not only to write about chaste love affairs, but also to be able to make them acceptable to a contemporary mindset influenced by sensibility and Christianity.

Her preface to the 1805 edition furthermore cites La Rochefoucauld in French and Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, and ends with Terence’s Eunuchus quoted in Latin, while Ariosto is quoted in Italian between her dedicatory sonnet to her mother and the actual text of Psyche. Even the adaptations of Apuleius she admits to having read¹⁰ are already classics in their own right, and Tighe’s status is enhanced by her ability to appreciate French and Italian poems while maintaining her independence from them at the same time. The Spenserian form of the poem nods to Psyche’s brief presence in The Faerie Queene.¹¹ There is no doubt that Tighe wants to present herself as a learned yet original poetess.

Studies of Tighe in recent years have focused on her self-fashioning as a female poet. Linkin Kramer, for example, highlights the obvious parallels between Psyche and Tighe’s own life as a society beauty, which Tighe stresses repeatedly,

Psyche’s transgression is to look at something forbidden, while Tighe’s visionary inspiration continues until the very last stanza of the poem, when the inspiration ceases. Tighe knows that any unpleasant associations between herself and Psyche would damage her own reputation as a poet.

I will put Tighe’s claims of relative ignorance of the rest of the Metamorphoses to the test by looking at echoes of and references to the rest of the novel in her Psyche poem. This is important because if Tighe claims little knowledge of the bawdy story of Lucius while still making considerable use of it, this has implications for our understanding of her self-fashioning as a poet and her reluctance to be associated with anything Apuleian other than the more romantic story of ‘Cupid and Psyche’. We therefore need to analyse any evidence for the use of the whole of the Metamorphoses, both in the first two cantos, which are more directly inspired by ‘Cupid and Psyche’, as well as in the more allegorical, quest-like Spenserian cantos III–VI. Linkin Kramer calls the latter four cantos a ‘sharp revision of the myth’, which has ‘nothing to do with the completion of punitive domestic tasks for Venus’, and stresses their difference from Apuleius.¹³ At first glance, Tighe seems to be correct to claim some distance from Apuleius’ story.

In the first two cantos, Tighe starts medias in res¹⁴ with Psyche, exhausted, resting on a flowery bank after having discovered Cupid’s true identity and having lost both Cupid and his palace. In a flashback, her story up to this point is told, partly echoing Apuleius’ version, partly deviating from it. At the end of canto II, the ring closes and we see Psyche again on that flowery bank. In cantos III–VI, Tighe takes Psyche on a Spenserian allegorical psychomachia,¹⁵ visually echoing Redcrosse, Una, and her lion: accompanied by a knight in armour (Cupid in disguise) who places her on his white steed, his attendant Constance, and a lion symbolizing passion, Psyche goes on a quest to find the urn of Beauty for Venus. Once this urn is placed on Venus’ altar, Cupid and Psyche can be reunited. On this quest, they encounter several allegorical figures, including Innocence, Vanity, Ambition, Chastity, and Jealousy. Although personifications of emotions, virtues, and sins are already present in Apuleius, where Sobriety is Venus’ servant and Sadness her enemy,¹⁶ it is clear that the last four cantos are indeed different from Apuleius’ story. Therefore, let us first look at some similarities and differences between ‘Cupid and Psyche’ and Tighe’s first two cantos, in which Tighe claims at least some inspiration from Apuleius.

Differences between Tighe and Apuleius in cantos I and II

In terms of plot, Tighe does not follow Apuleius slavishly. For example, like a contemporary society belle, and like Tighe herself, Psyche had many suitors (12):

In Apul. Met. 4.32,¹⁷ Psyche is devastated because no suitor is interested in her at all:

Psyche’s family, too, is sketched in a more realistic way in Tighe; her sisters are jealous of her already before her marriage to Cupid,¹⁸ because Psyche was worshipped and courted far and wide (13):

There is no mention of their jealousy in Apuleius until they visit her several times after her marriage (Met. 5.4).

Tighe’s Psyche never feels a desire to avenge her fate on her sisters, whereas Apuleius’ Psyche lures both of them to their deaths. Psyche wishes to visit her parents, especially her mother, in Tighe, who herself had a very close relationship with her own mother (canto I, 38),¹⁹ and even leaves Cupid’s palace to visit her family (canto II, 47), thus turning into a more actively engaged young lady than Apuleius’ Psyche, who can merely beg Cupid to allow her sisters to visit. Whereas Apuleius’ parents never see their daughter again, Tighe’s royal parents are relieved to see their daughter happily married to a figure whom they guess rightly to be a god (48).

Apuleius’ Psyche attempts suicide several times, but Tighe’s sensible Psyche both never contemplates it and more actively seeks help in her quest (67):

In Apuleius we hear about Cupid’s love at first sight for Psyche only after her betrayal and from his own mouth (Met. 5.24):

Tighe’s report of the events is both chronological and sensual, in a celebrated scene of mutual gazing (21):

Tighe’s scene is generally very different from Apuleius’ depiction: Cupid gives the sleeping Psyche the cup of anguish first (22), but also wounds and wakes her with his own arrow, and then, possibly accidentally, uses the same arrow on himself (23), whereupon he adds drops of joy for Psyche. The moment of falling in love is mutual, and Psyche has a vision of Cupid, although she is not sure whether it is real or a dream.²⁰ In Apuleius, Psyche only falls in love with Cupid much later, in the moment she holds the lamp over him and accidentally handles his arrows. Tighe’s romantic couple falls in unceasing mutual love with each other at the same time.

Whereas there is doubt about the legality of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius,²¹ Tighe’s poem of sensibility ensures that there is no doubt that the marriage is valid. Hymen is invoked during the coyly described wedding night (34) and becomes an allegorical helper figure for the couple in the later cantos. Despite Psyche’s betrayal of trust, Cupid never falls out of love with her. Crucially, there is no conversation between Cupid and Psyche after she wounds him with her lamp, and Tighe’s Psyche does not try to cling on to Cupid flying away: Cupid’s palace simply disappears around her (58). Then she hears the unseen Cupid’s voice, who prophesies a future union between them if she only manages to appease Venus (62). His continued invisibility here, whereas Apuleius’ Cupid no longer attempts to hide his shape, facilitates his role in cantos III–VI as her knight errant in disguise.

Apuleius’ Cupid, wounded by the oil, takes flight of his own accord, hurt by Psyche’s betrayal. Tighe’s Cupid never leaves her in doubt that he loves her, and that a union between the two is achievable. His undying love for her continues despite her betrayal (63):

Similarities between Tighe and Apuleius

Despite these important differences, there are some close echoes of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ in Tighe, especially in her ecphrastic set pieces. For example, Cytherean Venus’ shrines are left unattended and neglected by humans who worship Psyche instead (12):

This corresponds closely with the equivalent passage in Met. 4.29:

Venus’ outburst on discovering a mere mortal has usurped her place is given quite some space in Tighe (14–16), and shows echoes of Apuleian phrasing: both Venuses refer bitterly to their victory in the judgment of Paris, perform a suppliant prayer to their sons, ask for the lowest possible husband for Psyche and finally seal the deal with a rather passionate kiss.

Compare Met. 4.30–31:

Even Psyche’s Apuleian characterization as ‘simple’²² finds its echo in Tighe’s ‘her simple heart’ (49).

Echoes of Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ outside ‘Cupid and Psyche’

Importantly, other books of the Metamorphoses are echoed in the first two cantos as well, directly contradicting Tighe’s own claim of ignorance. After Venus’ outburst, she retires to the Island of Pleasure (17):

This recalls in some ways the depiction of the pantomime of Venus, the ‘mistress of pleasure’, in Met. 10.31 with its train of Hours and beautiful flowers. Interestingly, this is also the place to which Tighe’s Zephyrus brings Psyche after her marriage (28):²³

Throughout Tighe’s text, there are several references to change and metamorphosis, a central theme in Apuleius. For example, at the beginning of canto II (45), we read:

This theme is also touched upon in the advice to Psyche on how to gain Venus’ forgiveness and be reunited with her husband (66):

The most tell-tale scene in canto II, which belies Tighe’s claim to know little of Lucius’ story, follows on immediately from Cupid’s telling Psyche that she needs to appease Venus. Psyche reaches a temple adorned with ‘immortal roses’ (64), which is then revealed to be the temple of Ammon, a Libyan-Egyptian god. Here she encounters a kind old priest who will look familiar to readers of Met. 11:

This echoes Isis’ instructions to Lucius in Met. 11.6:

And the appearance of the priest in Met. 11.12:

It is Tighe’s old priest who advises Psyche how to gain Venus’ forgiveness and instructs her what to do. The roses, the white garments, and the helpful old priest of an Egyptian deity find close parallels in Lucius’ encounter with the priests of Isis in Met. 11. It would be odd to assume that Tighe had reached her decision to include him here and fashion him in in this way without detailed knowledge of the rest of the Metamorphoses.

Spenser’s ‘Temple of Isis’ (Faerie Queene book V canto vii) also features priests of Isis, but their description, with their linen shirts and moon-shaped mitres, although possibly inspired by Apuleius,²⁴ is not as close to the Metamorphoses as is that of Tighe:

Apuleius, more so than Spenser, is the inspiration for Tighe’s old priest. In Psyche’s reaction, and during other important passages from this scene onwards, Tighe stresses the observance of mystic silence (67):

Although Spenser’s Britomart prays silently, mysteries are absent from his Isiac temple. Tighe even imposes mystic silence on herself when she begins to describe Chastity’s palace in canto V (149):

The language of mystery cult, prominent in the Metamorphoses, is evident in Apuleius’ depictions of both Psyche and Lucius, and is also found in Tighe’s ‘Apuleian’ and ‘Spenserian’ cantos. In fact, Tighe here proves herself a perceptive reader of Apuleius by aligning these two characters with each other long before ‘Cupid and Psyche’ was identified as a ‘mise en abyme’ of Apuleius’ novel.²⁵ Consequently Tighe’s reception of the Metamorphoses offers a subtle and intelligent, and surprisingly modern, interpretation of Apuleius’ story.

Another important plot element in Tighe is the presence of the helper figures with which she surrounds her Psyche: a dove, symbolising innocence (68), joins her immediately; it is clearly identified as ‘The messenger of Cupid’. In the following cantos the dove is joined by a lion (‘passion’), and of course Cupid himself in disguise as a knight with his white horse, and with him his attendant Constance. In Apuleius, Psyche does have helpers, too, often animals like ants or an eagle, or talking objects like reeds or towers, and it is subtly suggested that it is Cupid himself who has sent her these aides.²⁶ Tighe makes Cupid’s continued involvement as a helper in Psyche’s tasks much more explicit, again offering a perceptive and inspired interpretation of Apuleius’ original tale. Psyche and Cupid in Tighe become equals in their quest for reunion. Cupid wears a disguise to avoid being recognized by her, but confides in her that he too, like Psyche, needs to placate Venus to find his lover again (82):

Tighe’s innovation neither discredits nor undermines Apuleius’ work, but puts some of its important key themes centre stage, showing her to be an excellent classicist and an attentive reader of the Metamorphoses.

Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ in cantos III–VI

Expanding our analysis to the allegorical cantos III–VI, I would argue that here, too, we find echoes of Lucius’ adventures. Like Psyche, Lucius also wanders from place to place, and encounters many different characters on his way. Just as Charite attempts to escape on the donkey Lucius (Met. 6.27–29), so Psyche mounts Cupid’s horse (81):

This action is repeated now and again, as, for example, when they flee the bower of loose Delight (91):

But it is in the description of her allegorical personifications, I argue, that Tighe relies most prominently on Apuleius’ characters. As we will see, Tighe uses these personifications to create negative images of the emotions and temptations that Psyche needs to overcome on her quest.

There may be an echo of the Isis procession of Met. 11 when, in canto III, Psyche and her companions meet the group of young men and women who will take them to the bower of loose Delight (85):

Compare Met. 11.10:

In Apuleius, various articles associated with the worship of Isis are carried along in the procession (Met. 11.9f.), including garlands, mirrors, combs, perfumes, lamps that copy divine light, and musical instruments:

The depiction of the bower of loose Delight, a place of temptation, focuses on the sensual nature of the Isis procession. The attendants wear similar clothes and carry comparable items of worship, such as lamps, and they also worship a divine queen (87):

This charming scene is, however, a delusion, and on the discovery of its fallacious nature the whole edifice collapses (89):

We are even introduced to a version of Isis herself in canto III, where Psyche encounters Vanity and Lusinga (Flattery) together on a chariot. Vanity’s eyes are fixed on the mirror that this allegory usually carries as her symbol (98):

This image allows Tighe to explore Vanity’s similarities with Isis, whose acolytes take great pains to let Isis see her own face in the mirrors they hold for her. Apuleius writes at Met. 11.9:

Vanity’s multi-coloured garments with images of the universe, her exotic perfume, and her elaborate curly hairstyle also recall Isis as she appeared to Lucius in his dream:

Compare Isis in Met. 11.3:

Isis transforms from Lucius’ benevolent saviour goddess into the treacherous allegory of flattery, thus allowing for a more problematic reflection on the nature of Isis’ involvement in the novel. Again, this displays a sceptical view of the goddess more familiar to modern scholars than to Tighe’s contemporaries. It is only much more recently that scholars have pointed to Isis’ role as a somewhat flawed saviour, whose priests display a degree of self-serving and greedy behaviour, and whose involvement in Lucius’ re-transformation is not as crucial as Lucius portrays it to be, since he could have found the Isis procession and eaten the saving roses without Isis’ epiphany to him on Cenchreae’s beach.²⁷

Lusinga then tricks Psyche into stepping into the chariot, where she is kidnapped and from which she cannot escape. She is finally brought to Vanity’s brother Ambition, whose lair lies in a true locus horridus, with a castle situated amidst craggy cliffs and dark woods (103):

Compare the cave of the robbers who hold Charite in Met. 4.6:

In canto IV, we briefly meet Credulity, an old woman riding on a donkey. In her argumentum, Tighe misleadingly cites a painting by Apelles²⁸ as her source (112) for her unsympathetic portrait of Credulity as (117) ‘blind’, ‘misshaped and timorous’, with a ‘voracious appetite […] Though all-devouring, yet unsatisfied’. Credulity tells Psyche many tales, just as the old servant of the robbers tells Charite a story, ‘Cupid and Psyche’ itself, to calm her down (119):

When Tighe’s Psyche listens to the ‘hag loquacious’ (120), she consequently shares several features of her early quest with Apuleius’ description of the desperate yet brave Charite, whose bridegroom comes in disguise to rescue her from the robbers, just as Cupid aids Psyche in Tighe.

Canto IV’s Disfida (Suspicion), in turn, bears echoes of Apuleius’ dangerous witch Pamphile, since Disfida’s castle is surrounded by allusions to Pamphile’s metamorphosis into an owl (Apul. Met. 3.21) and her alleged power over the elements, Tartarus, and several cosmic phenomena (Met. 2.5; cf. 121):

The owl reappears on page 123—‘Alas! the screaming night-bird only cries;’—and on 132,

where Disfida’s machinations hand Psyche over to Jealousy:

Disfida lives in a way that is similar to Milo and Pamphile (Apul. Met. 1.21) in their voluntary separation from society, as described by another garrulous old woman in Apuleius (121):

Like Pamphile (Met. 1.22), who sits at a ‘table before them with nothing on it’, inhospitable Disfida offers no food on her table nor lit fires in her hearth (122):

And, like Pamphile, she employs magic and binding spells (124):

Geloso (Jealousy) shares Disfida’s connections with magic (131, 133, 137), entraps Psyche in the shape of a snake and echoes the shapeshifting old man in Met. 8.21, who is apparently able to turn into a snake in order to devour his victims:

It is Cupid who bravely saves Tighe’s Psyche at the last moment from being devoured by jealousy (136):

In canto V, these assimilations of characters from Apuleius’ story to Tighe’s tale are much less frequent, because Psyche spends more or less the whole canto in the Palace of Castabella (Chastity). Much of the book is an extended epic catalogue of her personified handmaidens, and distinguished chaste men and women from mythology. Canto VI, by contrast, begins with repeated references to roses, spring, and a sea voyage for Psyche and her knight (180f.), a setting similar to the last book of the Metamorphoses, with its themes of renewal and Isis’ Ploiaphesia festival. After the journey over the sea and a short sojourn at Glacella’s (Indifference) icy palace, the group finally arrives on a beach, where Psyche’s journeys come to an end as she will now be able to collect the urn of Beauty and place it on Venus’ altar (202):

Similarly, Lucius’ prayer to Isis on the beach of Cenchreae and the announcement of her priest that he has finally reached a safe harbour mark the end of his troubles (Met. 11.15): ‘You have been driven before the heavy storms and the heaviest gales of Fortune, but now you have finally reached the harbour of peace and the altar of mercy’.

By this stage, Psyche has discovered the real identity of her knight as Cupid, and it is the god’s intervention which helps Psyche for a final time here. But it is not Psyche who completes her task. Unexpectedly for Tighe’s more proactive heroine, and just like Apuleius’ Psyche, who has considerable help from others during her four tasks set by Venus, Tighe’s Psyche yields the actual fetching of the urn with the water of Beauty to their attendant, Constance, on Cupid’s command (202, 204).²⁹ The only thing left for her to do is to pray fervently to Venus to restore Cupid to herself, while placing the urn on her altar (204):

Lucius, too, begs the Moon Goddess in Met. 11.2 to be restored to him and does not really have to do much to help himself apart from prayer—the Isis priest will bring the roses to him, and Lucius merely has to take them. Much friendlier than Apuleius’ Venus, Cupid’s mother agrees to the marriage and to Psyche’s apotheosis. The poem ends with Tighe’s farewell to her story and her own divine inspiration.

Tighe is therefore somewhat disingenuous when she claims to know little of the rest of the Metamorphoses. This is a clear strategy, a strategy which has worked with many of her modern readers, and it is obvious why she pursues it—her changes to ‘Cupid and Psyche’ made the story more palatable to the readers of her own time, and turned Psyche into a denizen of the age of sensitivity who struggles against inimical emotions to achieve her happiness in blissful marriage.³⁰ This is a far cry from Lucius’ sexual adventures and serial mishaps. After reshaping Psyche’s character based on the behaviour of contemporary society belles, a pattern she herself emulated, Tighe was forced by necessity to cut any connections with the bawdy parts of the novel. By tracing back some of her allegorical characters to Apuleius’ Pamphile, old women, or Isis, we can, however, rediscover added depths in her creative imagination and astute interpretations of Apuleius’ text.

English scholars have demonstrated how dangerous for the reputation of women in Tighe’s lifetime it was to be an authoress.³¹ An association with the rest of the Metamorphoses would have damaged Tighe, already vulnerable as a female poet, severely indeed. Even basing the portrait of the negative emotions Psyche needs to overcome on characters drawn from the rest of the Metamorphoses, and therefore indirectly admitting that she had read these bawdy stories, might have finished both her career and her social status. Her denial of any real knowledge of the rest of Apuleius’ novel, and her repeated stressing of her own originality, also preclude any identification of Tighe’s inspired female narrator or her muse with the old woman who tells the tale of Cupid and Psyche to Charite;³² personifications in Psyche which echo the old crone are negative, and the old woman is an unsympathetic character in Apuleius as well, with whom identification would have been equally injudicious for Tighe.

It is more widely recognized that she tells a similar white lie when she claims to be innocent of writing erotic tales. Tighe repeatedly addresses a set of idealized readers,³³ in the same way that Apuleius and Lucius do. She, however, does this strategically whenever her story might become too eroticized, as, for example, in the scene in which Cupid falls in love with Psyche. Consequently, she can claim to write an innocent allegorical tale of Love and Soul, just when she is, in fact, depicting some very sensuous scenes. Similarly, when she displays her credentials as a classicist from the beginning, and clothes her erotic tale in ancient dress, she distances herself from the dangerous eroticism her story evokes.

Despite her caution, Tighe, herself a society beauty,³⁴ was, from an early point, identified with her subject, with her friends giving her the nickname ‘Psyche’. The effigy on her tomb by John Flaxman (c. 1807) shows a sleeping Mary Tighe with a small weeping Psyche next to her head, extending the identification beyond the grave. The author, her femininity, and her morals became linked in the minds of her readers, proving again that Tighe was right to try to distance herself from Apuleius, for reasons of self-preservation as well as of self-fashioning, despite being one of Apuleius’ most innovative, interesting, and perceptive readers of the period. And she almost got away with claiming for herself both ignorance of Lucius’ sexual exploits and the status of a learned poetess able to teach chaste and pious love.

University of Leeds

__________

¹ M. Tighe, Psyche; or The Legend of Love (London 1805).

² Mary Tighe to Joseph Cooper Walker (co-founder of the Royal Irish Academy), 6 September 1803, cited in A. Buchanan, Mary Blachford Tighe: The Irish Psyche (Newcastle upon Tyne 2011) 175 n. 41.

³ Unless otherwise stated, quotations from Tighe follow M. Tighe, Psyche. With Other Poems. By the Late Mrs. Henry Tighe (London 1811, 3rd edn).

⁴ For an overview of authors and topics, see H. Linkin Kramer, ‘Mary Tighe and literary history: the making of a critical reputation’, Literature Compass 7 (2010) 564–76. Even A. Hoffmann, Das Psyche-Märchen des Apuleius in der englischen Literatur (Strasbourg 1908) 61–81 does not notice allusions to the rest of the Metamorphoses, stating that ‘die Abhängigkeit von Apuleius ist auf das Mindestmass reduziert’ (69).

⁵ See Hoffmann, Psyche-Märchen (n. 4, above) 69–70 for evidence that Tighe studied the text in Latin.

⁶ Buchanan, Mary Blachford Tighe (n. 2, above) 34, 77, and 81. It was also Henry Tighe who encouraged her to publish Psyche: H. Linkin Kramer, ‘Skirting around the sex in Mary Tighe’s ‘Psyche’’, Studies in English Literature, 1500– 1900 42 (2002) 731–52 (733).

⁷ Buchanan, Mary Blachford Tighe (n. 2, above) 8.

⁸ In footnotes to her 1803 manuscript, V. Fl. 5.109–11. On Sinope, on the Greek novels on Pan and Syringa, see M. Tighe, The Collected Poems and Journals, ed. H. Linkin Kramer (Lexington, KY 2005) 301–302, and xv for an astonishing list of influences.

⁹ In Tighe, The Collected Poems (n. 8, above) 295, Linkin Kramer notes that Tighe changed the Latin from ‘probos’ to ‘pios’, but both readings are transmitted in respective archetypes, see M. Valerii Martialis, Epigrammata, ed. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Stuttgart 1990) ad loc.

¹⁰ Molière’s Psyché (1671); Jean de La Fontaine’s Les Amours de Psyché et Cupidon (1669); Charles Albert Demoustier’s Lettres à Emilie sur la mythologie (1792–98); Giovan Battista Marino’s L’Adone (1623).

¹¹ In Spenser, Psyche appears briefly for nine lines (book 3, canto 6), as the teacher in true femininity of Amoret (3.6.51), together with her daughter Pleasure. For a detailed discussion of Tighe’s reception of this passage, see E. M. Goss, ‘A training in “feminitee”: Edmund Spenser, Mary Tighe, and reading as a lover’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 56 (2014) 259–91, who argues that Tighe’s poem offers the prequel and background story to Spenser’s instructress of love; Tighe sets out how Psyche was able to become the kind of teacher needed for Amoret as a model of achievable earthly love. For Spenser’s wider use of Apuleius, see R. H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford 2007) 384–428.

¹² Tighe, The Collected Poems (n. 8, above) xxiii. See also: A. Henderson, ‘Keats, Tighe, and the chastity of allegory’, European Romantic Review 10 (1999) 279-306; G. Kucich, ‘Gender crossings: Keats and Tighe’, Keats-Shelley Journal 44 (1995) 29–39.

¹³ Tighe, The Collected Poems (n. 8, above) xxii–iii.

¹⁴ One of the many epic features; others include epic similes or appeals to the Muse. Buchanan, Mary Blachford Tighe (n. 2, above) 68 argues that Tighe can rely on the familiarity of her readers with the story.

¹⁵ Tighe herself calls it ‘the beautiful ancient allegory of Love and the Soul’ (preface to 1811 edition, x).

¹⁶ Apul. Met. 5.30; 6.8–9. Carver, Protean Ass (n. 11, above) 398–405 points out that Una’s character in Spenser is already inspired by Apuleius’ Psyche. Tighe’s Psyche thus comes full circle.

¹⁷ All Apuleius translations are taken from: Apuleius, The Golden Ass, trans. P. G. Walsh (Oxford 1994).

¹⁸ Also noticed in Hoffmann, Psyche-Märchen (n. 4, above) 69–70.

¹⁹ The introductory sonnet to Psyche is addressed to her mother, making the poem a present of daughterly duty to Theodosia Blachford.

²⁰ Tighe’s imagined ‘graceful champion’ (22) of course already anticipates Cupid’s function in cantos III–VI; on the importance of themes of the female gaze, see H. Linkin Kramer, ‘Romanticism and Mary Tighe’s ‘Psyche’: peering at the hem of her blue stockings’, Studies in Romanticism 35 (1996) 55–72 (64); on viewing and blindness in Tighe as a new feminine aesthetics, see A. P. Hobgood, ‘The bold trespassing of a “proper romantic lady”: Mary Tighe and a female, romantic aesthetic’, European Romantic Review 18 (2007) 503–19.

²¹ See R. May, Apuleius and Drama: The Ass on Stage (Oxford 2006) 225–28.

²² Her simplicity is alluded to four times in Met. 5 alone: 5.11, 15, 19, and 24.

²³ ‘To Pleasure’s blooming isle their lovely charge they bear’.

^24. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche: Text, Introduction and Commentary. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius (Groningen 2004) 446 are more sceptical.

²⁵ On ‘mise en abyme’ (embedded narratological miniaturization), see L. Dällenbach, The Mirror in the Text (Oxford 1989).

²⁶ Cupid may help Psyche behind the scenes: P. James, Unity in Diversity: A Study of Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ (Hildesheim 1987) 183–85; M. Zimmerman, S. Panayotakis, V. Hunink, W.H. Keulen, S.J. Harrison, T. D. McCreight, B. Wesseling, and D. van Mal-Maeder, Apuleius Madaurensis, ‘Metamorphoses’, book IV 28–35, V and VI 1–

²⁷ See n. 24, above, on the lack of similarities between Lusinga and Spenser’s Isis. For a sceptical view of Isis’ involvement, see S. J. Harrison, Apuleius: A Latin Sophist (Oxford 2000), following through suggestions in the seminal J. J. Winkler, Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ ‘Golden Ass’ (Berkeley 1985). For more conciliatory readings, see May, Apuleius and Drama (n. 21, above), and especially S. Tilg, Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’: A Study in Roman Fiction (Oxford 2014).

²⁸ See Hoffmann, Psyche-Märchen (n. 4, above) 79–80 on the disingenuous nature of this claim.

²⁹ Buchanan, Mary Blachford Tighe(n. 2, above) 70: ‘it is difficult to see how she has learnt anything at all, or earned the prize of reconciliation with Cupid, since it is Constance, not Psyche herself, who eventually fulfils the quest by fetching the water from the sacred spring’.

³⁰ Buchanan, Mary Blachford Tighe (n. 2, above) 72 agrees with Tighe’s intentions, but does not realise her white lies: ‘For this audience, Mary was certainly keen to distance herself from the original story, the opening stanzas preparing the reader for a tale of chivalry and courtly love, and although she acknowledged her debt to Apuleius, she downplayed his influence—he supplied only an outline to her poem, and only in the first two cantos’.

³¹ Linkin Kramer, ‘Skirting around the sex’ (n. 6, above) 731: ‘when in 1801 Mary Tighe began composing Psyche […], an epic romance that offers a sensual, often erotic reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, she knew how dangerous articulating sexual passion could be for a woman’s literary reputation’.

³² E. M. Goss, Revealing Bodies: Anatomy, Allegory, and the Grounds of Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century (Lewisburg 2013) 126 at least acknowledges the old woman as the teller of the story in Apuleius.

³³ Linkin Kramer, ‘Skirting around the sex’ (n. 6 above) 733.

³⁴ See Linkin Kramer, ‘Mary Tighe and literary history’ (n. 4, above) 564–76.