April’s book display has a focus on the Greek myth The Rape of Persephone.
The myth is layered and complex. All at once it serves in reveling the underlying connections in the human experience, explaining the change in seasons and cycle of life, offering an archetype to the mother-daughter relationship, and relating a story of the female rite of passage into adulthood.
While ancient Greek society was strongly patriarchal, the myths and stories familiar to its people acknowledged the female divine and gave room for women to celebrate and honor their femininity and their experiences as women.
Popular interpretation has the return of life in the spring time to correspond with the reunion of Persephone and Demeter.
The myth of Persephone was tied religiously with the cult of Demeter and the Eleusinian mysteries. Growing out of the agrarian cults that honored Demeter as the goddess of the harvest, the rituals of the mysteries eventually developed into initiations in which participates believed in a reward in the afterlife. Some scholars believe this to be the seeds of Christianity in Rome and Greece.
It is believed that this myth dates back much further than its first recorded version in Hesiod’s Theogony, and it still continues to endure today. Many artists, poets, and writers have interpreted this story for its power and mystery. A recent offering is using the myth as an aspect of eco-feminism. Chatham offers a graduate course in eco-feminism as part of the Food Studies curriculum.
Stop by the library to today to learn more!
~Display and blog post by Donna Guerin, Reference Associate