Persephone and Liminality in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry and Art

Exploring canonical alongside lesser-known works, Persephone and Liminality in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry and Art provides a series of close readings of nineteenth-century British poetry and paintings that reinterpret the image of Persephone as the figure associated with a liminal experience. The representations of the goddess in Rossetti, Swinburne, Tennyson, and women writers demonstrate how Persephone’s image was revisited to show the prominence of liminal experience and its presence in nineteenth century Britain.

Persephone in the Victorian period is a richly layered figure who comes to symbolise reconciliation, transformation, and self-assertion, especially in relation to themes such as the intersection of liminality and British Aestheticism, the complexities of mother-daughter relationship, visions of masculinity and femininity, as well as the tensions between paganism and Christianity.

Clearly argued and deeply researched, this book will appeal to scholars of Victorian poetry, nineteenth century Hellenism, and British literature. By returning to the myth, nineteenth-century writers and painters demonstrated how the reinterpretations of Persephone transgress the boundaries of time and place, becoming a profound metaphor for negotiating identity, mortality, and the shifting boundaries of the self.