The Symbolic Rose

Of value to dreamwork practitioners, literary critics, students of symbolism and the arts, art therapists, and all those cultivating an aesthetic imagination, Seward reads Western literary history through what is perhaps its most enduring—and most endearing—symbol.


The author considers Freud’s, Frazer’s, and Jung’s interpretations of the significance of the rose and then moves through ancient religions towards the antecedents of the modern literary rose, focusing primarily on Dante’s Divine Comedy and the romantic literature directly influencing W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce. Along the way, the author also attends to the rose’s manifestations in a host of “lesser” figures, from Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell to D. H. Lawrence and Edith Sitwell.


Third, revised edition