6 - Journey to the Underworld

As equinox tips us once more into the dark half of the year (here in the northern hemisphere), the season of story, we journey to the underworld with the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.⁠

And finally, we're finishing our exploration of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen to see what will happen to our dear friends Kai and Gerda.

Resources:

• "Persephone" from The Knot poems by Alice Jones
• Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays
• "Explainer: the story of Demeter and Persephone" by Chris Mackie
• Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich
• "Family Structure and Feminine Personality" by Nancy Chodorow

More from Dr. Helene Foley:

• Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays (Princeton University Press, 1994)
• Helene Foley, Professor of Classics at Columbia University
• Helene Foley, Professor of Classics at Barnard College
• Reimagining Greek Tragedy on the American Stage (University of Califormia Press 2012)
• Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, co-editor (Oxford University Press 2011)
• Visualizing the Tragic, co-editor (Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. The Martin Classical Lectures of 1995 (Princeton University Press, 2001)
• Women in the Classical World: Image and Text, with E. Fantham, et al. (Oxford University Press, 1994)
• Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Cornell University Press, 1985)
• Reflections of Women in Antiquity, editor (Gordon and Breach, 1981)