Unveiling the queen of the underworld: images of Persephone in Greece and southern Italy
Average rating
Cast your vote
You can rate an item by clicking the amount of stars they wish to award to this item.
When enough users have cast their vote on this item, the average rating will also be shown.
Star rating
Your vote was cast
Thank you for your feedback
Thank you for your feedback
Author
Ferguson, Teresa C.Keyword
Research Subject Categories::HUMANITIES and RELIGION::History and philosophy subjects::Archaeology subjects::ArchaeologyResearch Subject Categories::HUMANITIES and RELIGION::Aesthetic subjects::Art
Art history
Greek mythology
Persephone
Kore
Demeter
Hades
Ancient Greece
Eleusis
Eleusinian mysteries
Corinth
Acrocorinth
Locri Epizephyrii
Francavilla di Sicilia
Sicily
Date Published
2020-05
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
During antiquity, Persephone, the storied “Queen of the Underworld,” assumed multiple forms throughout the Greek world. The most famed myth involving Persephone details the goddess’ abduction by Hades and her later reunification with her mother, Demeter. For the inhabitants of mainland Greece, Persephone was known simply as Kore, the “maiden”; her significance as a goddess relied heavily on her familial connection to Demeter and the role that she played in the Eleusinian Mysteries. However, within certain Greek settlements in Southern Italy (often referred to as Magna Graecia or “Great Greece” due to the number of its Greek sites), Persephone had a distinct identity separate from that of Demeter, and she was more commonly associated with marriage and the salvation of the deceased. This contrast in the beliefs held about Persephone can be observed in visual depictions of the goddess from sites in Greece and Southern Italy. The goal of this paper is to explore the multivalent nature of Persephone by examining her representation in objects from various areas around mainland Greece and Magna Graecia. This paper will focus on material evidence in varying media from four different locations, two in Greece (Eleusis and Corinth) and two in Southern Italy (Locri Epizephyrii and Sicily) Through this study, I hope to discover how geography and differing religious beliefs can inform the way in which a particular deity is represented in art.The following license files are associated with this item:
- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Make it Plain: MFA Thesis - MetalRichards, Shani (2016-05)Knowing the history of craft and the material traditions are important to making my work. I insist on having this metalsmithing label, and I purposely challenge and subvert the discourse of what a metalsmith is. As a metalsmith I investigate like an archaeologist, and I search for objects and people that reflect the history of post colonialism in America. I had to take a critical look at the effects of slavery had on this country. How this country was built with was on the backs of slaves. History excludes working class minorities: The faceless and nameless who worked the land picking cotton, digging coal, and cleaning ditches.
-
Don’t keep it bottled up: an analysis of black glass wine bottles at Historic Huguenot Street New Paltz, NYSlater, Reuben (2019-05)Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz New York has been a site of human activity stretching back well over nine thousand years, including the Native American Munsee speakers and the French Huguenots who settled New Paltz in 1677. Archaeological excavations over the past twenty years have helped to uncover the rich prehistory and history at the site. In this paper I introduce and examine seventeenth century English black glass wine bottles, as objects of analysis that help illuminate the material culture and foodways of these early Huguenots. Furthermore, I demonstrate how an analysis of this material culture and their foodways, excavated from Historic Huguenot Street builds a data set on the social and economic lives of the Huguenots that the written record does not. This paper will draw heavily from the theoretical framework of Louis Binford’s trinomic categorization of artifacts into the ideotechnic, sociotechnic and technomic spheres to analyze the artifacts in question and gain insight on the interaction between the Huguenots and the world around them.
-
Comedy and tragedy : a history of theatre as a reflection of social identityO'Grady, Ryan (2020-05)In The Poetics, Aristotle outlines the origins and history of Greek theatrical performance to set up his analysis of Tragedy as the successor to the Epic poem...As such, Aristotle, although most likely unintentional, frames Comedy and Tragedy as two genres that share little to no similarities other than being forms of theatrical performance. I acknowledge the two genres possess many differences in terms of plot structure, staging and the audience's emotional response, but these differences do not make them inherently oppositional. In fact, my paper will hopefully show by analyzing how Tragedy and Comedy functioned during eras when the theatre was a central artform in society--Greece, Rome, Renaissance England, and the post-WWII Theatre of the Absurd--that not only do these two genres share many similarities as art forms, but they also share the same communal function by reinforcing the ideologies of the time period.