L'Invention d'un mythe: Psyché. Allégorie et fiction, du siècle de Platon au temps de La Fontaine (review)

Psyche has always been an elusive figure. Myth or tale? Allegory or simple fiction? Ancient or modern? Proper name or common noun? In teasing out the complications bound up with the figure of Psyche, the author of this study develops new ways of thinking about myth generally, and, like Psyche with her lamp, sheds new light on the very question of beauty in art. The study takes in an impressive range of texts from literature and the visual arts. These texts for the most part find their sources in two ancient writers, and in subsequent commentary on them: the story of Psyche's love affair with Cupid in Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and the account of the birth of Psyche given by Martianus Capella. Also relevant are iconographical representations of Psyche, especially ancient funerary carvings (psukhè was always associated with death). Later Psyche was to come to life as a vital, sensual figure, when it was understood that allegory was not the only mode available for reading her story. The first part of the study is concerned with the representation of Psyche as allegory (allegoremes) and the readings of her myth in the neo-platonic and Christian traditions (allegoresis) — Psyche really was 'a perfectly Christian figure', not just a late recuperation of a pagan myth. The philosophical background, though vast and complex, is managed with admirable facility and erudition. But this is no dry survey, and the author is a particularly sharp reader of texts. The second part of the book is entitled 'Forma': it traces the ways Psyche outgrew allegorizing treatments and came to be read aesthetically. In the classical age, settings of her story put into play the very concept of representation and the genesis of literature. In this section the author deploys some very persuasive readings of Apuleius and others, in particular on the significance of naming and the theme of the search for identity. The author is equally at home analysing texts in Latin, Greek, Italian, English and Spanish; lucid translations are provided for all. Psyche enjoyed her greatest fame in the baroque period, especially in France and Spain. Authors were attracted to her sensuality (for Psyche, though she is the soul, is also a body) and to the formal conceits her story invited: wordplay, illusion, the paradox of 'Amour amoureux'. The Psyche myth was always associated with doublings and couplings: male-female, life-death, soul-body, human-divine; it was constantly intersecting with other myths — Pandora, Hermaphroditus, Echo-Narcissus — and, though it lent itself to performance, it never quite succeeded in finding its proper form, surviving only in hybrid genres such as tragicomedy. Its most successful manifestation was arguably La Fontaine's parodic treatment, whose subject was really that of literature itself. This book surveys a great wealth of material and contains some extremely thought-provoking analysis of texts; it is essential reading for anyone interested in the 'invention' of myth, both in the sense of its genesis and elaboration through the ages, and in the rhetorical sense, its uses in literary composition.