About this Event

“Lady Lilith” is one of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s most famous and entrancing paintings. When depicting beauty and danger in the painting’s accompanying sonnet, he says of Lilith that “still she sits, young while the earth is old.” This portrayal of Lilith, who was driven away from Eden before Adam and Eve’s departure, has many contemporaries among the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It also shares similarities with the sociological theories of early criminologists, the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud, the gothic tradition of the vampire, the fantasies of early feminists, and even in ads promising women long and dense hair.

Join Professor Miranda Wilson to explore the allure of these 19th-century “belles dames sans merci,” who were often met with repulsion and desire. Through this, you will gain insight into how monsters work – the specific dangers they promise and the pleasures their victims long for – in both Victorian times and today.

Miranda Wilson is an associate professor of renaissance literature at the University of Delaware, where she teaches classes on Shakespeare, classical literature, violent women, and drama from the ancient to the contemporary. She has published on early modern poison, plants, clocks, architecture, queenship and gift culture.

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This in-person event is free and open to the public. It will not be recorded. Light refreshments will be provided.

Registration is required as seating is limited.

This event is part of the lecture series, The Rossettis: Radical Victorian Artists and Writers, held in conjunction with the Delaware Art Museum and its exhibition The Rossettis.