Metaphor, metonymy, and myth: Persephone’s death-like journey in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in the light of Greek phraseology, Indo-European poetics, and Cognitive Linguistics

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, an Ancient Greek epic poem composed during the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, is our main source for the myth of the goddess Persephone’s abduction by the death-god Hades, and of her mother Demeter’s subsequent sorrows. This chapter argues for a combined approach to the interpretation of this text that takes into account Greek parallels, comparative data from other Indo-European poetic traditions, and the findings of contemporary Cognitive Linguistics.