Underworld Journeys In Kathryn Harrison's THE KISS And Alison Townsend's PERSEPHONE IN AMERICA

Fairy tales - Psychological aspects;Symbolism in fairy tales

Engel, Michelle A.Baker, Laura Jean ;

University of Wisconsin

关键词: Fairy tales - Psychological aspects;    Symbolism in fairy tales;   

Others  :  https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/54279/Engel%2c_Michelle_With_TP.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: University of Wisconsin

【 摘 要 】

Kathryn Harrison;;s memoir The Kiss and Alison Townsend;;s poetry collectionPersephone in America both employ elements of fairy tale and mythology as a template forbiographical and autobiographical narratives. The Kiss covertly reinvents the myths of SleepingBeauty and Cinderella as creatures of the underworld through the use of blood imagery andmetaphorical forbidden fruit as well as the inversion of the womb as a place of death- anunderworld within the female body. Townsend adopts similar imagery while addressing issuesof consciousness, mental illness, linguistic and emotional manipulation, and entrapment. Herpoetry invokes Persephone as muse while also comparing and contrasting Demeter?s daughterto herself and women she has known. For both texts, the underworld is a realm of psychictransformation and healing, a fertile environment for the development of the narrative self. Iinvestigate both how the myths and fairy tales chosen affect the narrative?s meaning and howone might create original, autobiographical works using similar motifs from fairy tales andmythology for inspiration.Secondary source material to further illuminate mythic and fairy tale references fromthe aforementioned primary works include the Homeric ?Hymn to Demeter;? Dante?s DivineComedy; Giambattista Basile?s ?Sole Lune e Talia? from his collected Italian folktales, IlPentamerone, or The Story of Stories; French author Charles Perrault?s ?La belle au boisdormant? or ?The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood?; several works collected by the BrothersGrimm, including ?All-Fur?; John Milton?s Paradise Lost; and, more recently, magical realistAngela Carter?s 1979 short story anthology ?The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.? Additionalscholarly sources relating to autobiography, feminist storytelling, menstruation and other topicsof interest will be included, as well.The theme of abduction to the underworld resonates with many life experiences sharedby both authors, including emotional trauma and sexual assault. Persephone?s mythologytherefore offers a very useful template with which to consider the process of recovery throughcreativity. Violent fairy tales such as ?Little Red Riding Hood,? ?Sleeping Beauty,? and?Cinderella? variants similarly map out a narrative for healing from the theft of one?s innocence.As both a reader of fairy tales and a creative writer, I learned a great deal from both primarytexts through researching their mythical and fairy tale allusions and through piecing together myown creative works adapting similar imagery and subject matter. Romanticized versions of theabove myths and fairy tales already pervade popular culture; therefore, they are powerfultalismans when infused with the depth and gravitas from their original source texts andcontextualized in a contemporary, autobiographical or biographical setting.