Persephone in Hell (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Rita Dove
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Poetic sequence
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric sequence
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Mythology or myths, Hell, Greek or Roman times, Greece or Greek people
The Poem
“Persephone in Hell,” a sequence of seven poems, forms the third of seven sections in Dove’s collection Mother Love. The sequence and the collection explore the Greek myth of Demeter: With almost no witnesses and with the permission of her father Zeus, the supreme Olympian deity, Persephone has been abducted and raped by Hades, the ruler of the underworld and her uncle, who subsequently makes her his queen. Unable to find her daughter, an angry and inconsolable Demeter wanders among mortals, disguised as an elderly woman. She comes to Eleusis, where she...
[The entire page is 1667 words long]
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