Blackwell Reference Online

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Mary Tighe's Psyche, or, the Legend of Love (1805) begins like an epic, in medias res:Much wearied with her long and dreary way.And now with toil and sorrow well nigh spent.Of sad regret and wasting grief the prey.Fair Psyche through untrodden forests went. (I. 1)We do not know who ‘fair Psyche’ is, where she is going, how she found herself alone in the woods, what might be causing her such regret and grief.Readers of Psyche are likely to find themselves beginning ‘in the middle of things’ as well — unburdened (and unaided) by critical preconceptions like those that prepare our way for poems by Wordsworth or Keats — though Psyche has thus far received perhaps more critical attention than any other long poem written by a woman in the Romantic period. These readers will also find things they know well from Edmund Spenser: poetry full of adventure, Gothic settings, and magic, narrated in lush, painterly language. Tighe has artfully employed a polished modernized version of Spenser's language to invent a subjective epic from a woman's perspective.The story of Mary Tighe (1772–1810) is surprisingly familiar as well, in many ways the story of a typical Romantic poet. She died (like Keats, of tuberculosis) at the young age of 37 (a year older than Byron at his death) and (as with Keats, Byron and Shelley) the tragedy of her death brought poignancy and popularity to her work. Besides the ... log in or subscribe to read full text