page_title: Cupid and Psyche
section_title: Literature
hierarchical_section_title: Cupid and Psyche / Classical tradition / Literature
caption_attribution_description: English: Cupid and Psyche
context_page_description: Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from Metamorphoses, written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis. The tale concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche and Cupid or Amor, and their ultimate union in a sacred marriage. Although the only extended narrative from antiquity is that of Apuleius from 2nd century AD, Eros and Psyche appear in Greek art as early as the 4th century BC. The story's Neoplatonic elements and allusions to mystery religions accommodate multiple interpretations, and it has been analyzed as an allegory and in light of folktale, Märchen or fairy tale, and myth.
  Since the rediscovery of Apuleius's novel in the Renaissance, the reception of Cupid and Psyche in the classical tradition has been extensive. The story has been retold in poetry, drama, and opera, and depicted widely in painting, sculpture, and even wallpaper. Though Psyche is usually referred to in Roman mythology by her Greek name, her Roman name through direct translation is Anima.
context_section_description: In 1491, the poet Niccolò da Correggio retold the story with Cupid as the narrator. John Milton alludes to the story at the conclusion of Comus (1634), attributing not one but two children to the couple: Youth and Joy. Shackerley Marmion wrote a verse version called Cupid and Psyche (1637), and La Fontaine a mixed prose and verse romance (1699).
  William Blake's mythology draws on elements of the tale particularly in the figures of Luvah and Vala. Luvah takes on the various guises of Apuleius's Cupid: beautiful and winged; disembodied voice; and serpent. Blake, who mentions his admiration for Apuleius in his notes, combines the myth with the spiritual quest expressed through the eroticism of the Song of Solomon, with Solomon and the Shulamite as a parallel couple.
  Mary Tighe published her poem Psyche in 1805. She added some details to the story, such placing two springs in Venus' garden, one with sweet water and one with bitter. When Cupid starts to obey his mother's command, he brings some of both to a sleeping Psyche, but places only the bitter water on Psyche's lips. Tighe's Venus only asks one task of Psyche, to bring her the forbidden water, but in performing this task Psyche wanders into a country bordering on Spenser's Fairie Queene as Psyche is aided by a mysterious visored knight and his squire Constance, and must escape various traps set by Vanity, Flattery, Ambition, Credulity, Disfida (who lives in a "Gothic castle"), Varia and Geloso. Spenser's Blatant Beast also makes an appearance. Tighe's work influenced English lyric poetry on the theme, including two poems by William Wordsworth called "To a Butterfly," and the Ode to Psyche (1820) by John Keats. Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poem Cupid and Psyche (1826) illustrates an engraving of a painting by W. E. West.
  William Morris retold the Cupid and Psyche story in verse in The Earthly Paradise (1868–70), and a chapter in Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean (1885) was a prose translation. About the same time, Robert Bridges wrote Eros and Psyche: A Narrative Poem in Twelve Measures (1885; 1894).
  Sylvia Townsend Warner transferred the story to Victorian England in her novel The True Heart (1929), though few readers made the connection till she pointed it out herself. Other literary adaptations include The Robber Bridegroom (1942), a novella by Eudora Welty; Till We Have Faces (1956), a version by C.S. Lewis narrated by a sister of Psyche; and the poem "Psyche: 'Love drove her to Hell'" by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle).  Robert A. Johnson made use of the story in his book She: Understanding Feminine Psychology, published in 1976 by HarperCollinsPublishers.
caption: Cupid and Psyche (1817) by Jacques-Louis David: the choice of narrative moment—a libertine adolescent Cupid departs Psyche's bed with "malign joy"[44]—was a new twist on the well-worn subject[45]
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