ABSTRACT
The myth of Persephone and Demeter has been re-imagined throughout time, but it especially attracted artists and writers in the romantic, Victorian, and modern periods. Whereas traditional retellings of the myth focused on the plight of Demeter, romantics and Victorians began to explore the subjectivity of Persephone as she separates from her mother. This historical shift coincided with the inauguration of fantastic literature capturing the emotional realities of the young, which reveals an emergent congruence between the myth and ideas about children, especially girls, in relation to society and cycles of development. In poetry, women writers began to use the myth to explore the agony and ecstasy of female development, conveying a profound ambivalence about growing up in patriarchal cultures. Yet Persephone remained open to refl ection in the work of both male and female writers. As a uniquely indeterminate and homeless girl, fated forever to cycle between worlds, she inspired paradoxical symbolism of growth and escape. Her launch into the underworld became the perfect muse for writers who would focus on the journeys of girls; imaginative literature for the young also paradoxically embraces and resists child development. The repetition of Persephone’s fertile journey is the subject of this book.
