Boccaccio, 1511

Stepping back in time, the Renaissance and Humanism saw Apuleius’ text as a perfect combination of Platonic philosophy and erotic and narrative potential. This was especially clear in the story of Cupid and Psyche.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was a Renaissance humanist and friend of Petrarch, who wrote in both Italian and Latin. His works include prose romances, the Decameron (which influenced Morris’ Earthly Paradise), On Famous Women, and On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles (Genealogia deorum gentilium, 1360-1374). This mythography tries to bring order into the confusing genealogy of the pagan gods of Greece and Rome and quickly became a reference work for many generations. Book 5, chapter 22 retells the story of Psyche, and gives two genealogies for her: at first Boccaccio identifies her, following some late antique sources, as the daughter of Apollo (god of the Sun), but then summarises Apuleius’ story, where she is a princess born of mortal parents, diligently and in detail up to the point where Cupid deserts her because she broke the taboo and looked at her sleeping husband. The rest of the story is then told very briefly. Boccaccio concludes by explaining the story’s meaning, as he sees it: Psyche is the soul, and Apollo the god of true light, has therefore to be her father – the Platonist philosophical explanation Boccaccio aspires to clashes with Apuleius’ tale, but Boccaccio allows both to stand next to each other.

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