Kontakt
E-Mail:
sophie.seidler@lmu.de
Persephone in the Time of Anorexia. Poetics and Pathology of Slenderness and Food-Refusal in Myth, Psychoanalysis, and Contemporary Women’s Writing
My dissertation analyzes several literary versions and modern interpretations of the ancient myth of Persephone and Demeter. Food and abstinence, sexuality and self-renunciation, misogyny and female solidarity are contrasting pairs along which Greek and Roman versions can be read. The reception of the myth in our time – both in literature and theory – is often governed by questions of gender expression, body-affirmation/-denial, and, curiously, psychiatric pathology – an explosive mix of readings and interpretations which I strive to organize and investigate in my PhD project.