Daphne in the Anthropocene

“Was it the tree, rather than Daphne, that Apollo wanted?”
(James Richardson 85)

In an ancient Greek myth, a nymph named Daphne metamorphoses into a laurel tree to escape the unwanted advances of the god Apollo. This story has been retold many times over the centuries, most memorably in the version offered by the Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphoses (8 CE). Daphne and Apollo similarly inspired the seventeenth-century painters Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (“Guercino”) and Nicolas Poussin, as well as the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whose marble Apollo and Daphne (1622-25) is a recognized masterpiece of baroque carving. In the twenty-first century, Daphne’s story is often interpreted as an allegory for female resistance, agency, and resilience in the face of male violence.