Joseph Beaumont, Psyche, or love's mystery, 1702

In contrast, the philosophical strand of Cupid and Psyche reception often stressed the compatibility of its story with religious salvation.

Joseph Beaumont (1616-1699) was a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, until 1644, when he was ejected for being an Anglican royal sympathiser. He resumed several college posts after the Restoration in 1662, and also became chaplain to the King. While away from Cambridge, he composed Psyche, or Love’s Mystery (1648) in twenty cantos, with each stanza having six lines arranged in an ababcc pattern. In this extremely long epic poem, Beaumont allegorises the story, and focuses on how Psyche, the Soul, is lead to her Christianised eternal life with the help of God’s Grace and Phylax, her guardian angel. Both help her to overcome negative emotions like lust or heresy. Her journeys take her to the Holy Land and back to England, where she is finally saved. Many learned allusions to the Bible, and the association of Psyche with Eve, make this Christianised version of the pagan story a suitable subject for a clergyman, and Beaumont’s other works include a commentary on Ecclesiastes and notes on the Pentateuch.

The Brotherton has two very different editions of the work. This copy is a 1702 revised edition by Joseph Beaumont’s son Charles, who himself added four more cantos to the work.

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