Contribution to Book
The Persephone Myth in Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales
Images of Persephone: Feminist Readings of the Persephone Myth
(1994)
Abstract
Images of Persephone have appeared in the works of male and female writers for hundreds of years. Because the story of Persephone and Demeter is so moving, embodying archetypes of the "loving and terrible" mother and the rite of passage for women in patriarchal cultures, the myth resonates throughout Western consciousness.
These essays explore the myth through critical analysis of literary texts, the authors of which include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Atwood, Cixous, and Morrison. The essays converge at three important areas of study: the feminist/cultural, the archetypal, and the literary/textual. They explore women's relationships and experiences within patriarchal cultures that range from Homer's classical Greece to Cixous's postmodern France, from Chaucer's England to Alice Walker's contemporary America.
Disciplines
Publication Date
1994
Editor
Elizabeth T. Hayes
Publisher
University Press of Florida
Citation Information
Laura Laffrado. "The Persephone Myth in Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales" Gainesville, FLImages of Persephone: Feminist Readings of the Persephone Myth (1994) p. 75 - 83 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/laura-laffrado/15/