Purple emperor

in literature and culture

The purple emperor has unrivalled status in English poetry and literature. It is a leviathan, symbolising the mysteries and elusiveness of beauty. This partly results from its scientific name iris — after Iris, the messenger of the Greek gods, who appeared to mortals in the guise of a rainbow. Iris appears spectacularly in Virgil’s Aeneid and subsequently in the poetry of Alexander Pope. The purple emperor features in John Masefield’s poetry, and in books as diverse as Tolkien’s The Hobbit and John Fowles’s The Collector. Perhaps it is England’s national butterfly?