ABSTRACT
To contextualize Nin’s own interest with the minotaur myth in the novelette Seduction of the Minotaur, I begin with a survey of the artistic re-visioning of the minotaur myth in the 20th century. I analyze the ways in which Seduction of the Minotaur is Nin’s feminist re-visioning of the ancient minotaur myth. By making Ariadne the protagonist, who is associated with the mazes, labyrinths and the umbilical link to the womb in the myth of the minotaur, Nin captures her protagonist Lillian’s capacity to embrace her inner landscape as a feminine-embodied and spiritual journey. In a mechanistic world where Nin lamented the loss of inner connections, including to the feminine, in this story Nin insists on an ontological understanding of recovering the embodied feminine psyche, revealing that biological bodies do indeed shape and reflect psyche.
