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Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2023.htm
Start Date
8-6-2023 4:00 PM
End Date
8-6-2023 4:50 PM
Description
If you know one thing about Persephone, it is that she was abducted by Hades, held captive, and ate pomegranate seeds in the Underworld. Although Demeter rescued her daughter, she had to return for several months each year as a consequence of consuming the “Fruit of the Underworld.” But tasting those succulent ruby red seeds was not the first time she succumbed to desire—according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter II, the first thing Persephone “bites” is a lure. Hades sets a trap: a flower with “one hundred stems of fragrant blossoms.” When Persephone grasps a stalk of this flower, a hellmouth opens and “the wide-pathed earth yawned . . . and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her.” Persephone’s story is just one example of how hellmouths and consumption feature prominently in fantastic Ur-texts such as the Aeneid and Dante's Inferno. This presentation will trace the evolution of the Underworld and hellmouths as well as the consequences of consumption therein from the story of the future Queen of Hades through iconic texts including Alice in Wonderland and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and then focus on Miyazaki's Spirited Away, Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea, Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic.
Included in
Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons
Persephone Bites: Consumption in the Underworld
If you know one thing about Persephone, it is that she was abducted by Hades, held captive, and ate pomegranate seeds in the Underworld. Although Demeter rescued her daughter, she had to return for several months each year as a consequence of consuming the “Fruit of the Underworld.” But tasting those succulent ruby red seeds was not the first time she succumbed to desire—according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter II, the first thing Persephone “bites” is a lure. Hades sets a trap: a flower with “one hundred stems of fragrant blossoms.” When Persephone grasps a stalk of this flower, a hellmouth opens and “the wide-pathed earth yawned . . . and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her.” Persephone’s story is just one example of how hellmouths and consumption feature prominently in fantastic Ur-texts such as the Aeneid and Dante's Inferno. This presentation will trace the evolution of the Underworld and hellmouths as well as the consequences of consumption therein from the story of the future Queen of Hades through iconic texts including Alice in Wonderland and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and then focus on Miyazaki's Spirited Away, Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea, Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic.
Comments
SESSION V
4:00 PM -4:50 Eastern
3:00 PM -3:50 Central
2:00 PM -2:50 Mountain
1:00 PM -1:50 Pacific
8:00 PM – 8:50 GMT