ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Mary Tighe's negotiation of a male literary tradition—the ways in which she consciously engages with the established formulations of the epic as a poetic genre while reworking them simultaneously for her own purposes—and her means of achieving success in her task. In Psyche the protagonist journeys beyond contemporary male notions of the role of the woman in love, and Tighe intends an exploration of female identity by tracing the gradual growth of the feminine persona as it develops in an amorous relationship. One obvious way for Tighe to neutralize charges of impropriety was to emphasize the conventionality of her subject, a well-known classical myth presented in the ornately graceful Spenserian verse form. The procession that takes Psyche to the rock is torn between two purposes— marriage and death—and it betrays uncertainty about which of the two it should prioritize.
