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Idea of transformation ovid's metamorphoses
Idea of transformation ovid's metamorphoses
Idea of transformation ovid's metamorphoses
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A mother’s love for her daughter is often described as all-consuming and all-powerful, which is rather fitting because this love is what drives a mother to make unimaginable sacrifices and difficult decisions in order to protect her child. Many would argue that a mother’s wholesome and natural love is far more powerful and effective than a perverse love derived from lust and desire. However, in Ovid’s Ceres and Prosperina from Metamorphoses, Ceres’ inability to fully rescue Prosperina from Dis indicates a limit on even maternal love. Though a mother’s love is able to invoke great passion as demonstrated by Ceres’ wrath, it is ultimately unable to completely overcome and surpass the love shown by Dis, which is defiled by lust. While Ceres’ …show more content…
Jupiter, the bias mediator, refuses to sympathize with Ceres; instead, he holds on to his fraternal loyalties and states that “Prosperina may come back… [if] she has not touched food” (V.704-706). It is unclear whether or not Jupiter knows that Prosperina has already eaten eaten food from the underworld, but it is plausible to assume that he has some indication given his authority over fate. As impassioned as Ceres’ pleading may have been, her love for Prosperina does not sufficiently move Jupiter. Confronted again with Ceres’ agony, Jupiter’s resolve does not wane, so he establishes a divided custody of Prosperina between Dis and Ceres. Maternal love, however transcendent, has its limitations. No matter how poignant Ceres may have been in her solicitation of Jupiter, his unfair and unjust judgment remained. Driven by love, Ceres does not relent and eventually finds Prosperina, but the maternal love is finite as it cannot fully free Prosperina. Interestingly enough, Dis’ “hasty” and artificial love is able to abduct the young goddess and partially keep her, further revealing pure-love’s deficiencies
There are many differences in the behavior of the lover and the rapist characters of the Metamorphoses. " The standard markers of a love relationship include the initial 'love at first sight' scene, often followed by a personal elegy of the loved one's heightened qualities." (Chen) When one falls in love, everything about that person is wonderful and beautiful, including their inner being as well. The admirer uses frequent and excessive metaphors and compliments to describe the favorite:
Throughout time, love has been a steady theme in music, literature, and film. Love is perhaps one of the most obvious emotions to portray and it can often be described as be sensual, sexual, spiritual or mystic, and divine. The tradition of courtly love began in the twelfth- century with the traveling songs of the performing troubadours and trouvères throughout Europe. Their songs of love were the source of all Western vernacular poetry and through the evolution of time developed into the popular chanson of the fifteenth and sixteenth- centuries. Perhaps the most common themes in Burgundian, Parisian and international chansons is that of fine amour or refined love. Due to the influence of culture and the progression of time, the subject matter and compositional style of the chanson changed as it moved through Burgundy, Paris and eventually spread internationally.
...Circe's satisfaction that Picus would be with no other woman. She says, "You shall be punished for this, you shall not be given / To Canens any more, and you will learn / What a woman, scorned in love, can do, that woman / Being Circe, loved and scorned!" (Ovid 350).
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an anti-epic that was written in an attempt to poke fun at the seriousness of Virgil’s Aeneid. Although the Aeneid and Metamorphoses differ vastly from one another, both of these two revolutionary Roman works provide contemporary readers with insight into Rome’s treatment of women during the age of Augustus. However, Ovid’s Metamorphoses portrays women in a much more positive light than Virgil does in the Aeneid, and this informs readers that Ovid, not Virgil, was at least somewhat concerned with the oppression of women in ancient Roman society.
Virgil’s The Aeneid, to this day, remains one of the most influential epics to ever grace the merciless limitations of manuscript, inspiring, in pop culture as well as literature, an onslaught of themes, mythology, values, and the general sense of what a hero must be-or do- in order to overcome the obstacles of the gods and man. Written somewhere between 29 and 19 BC, consisting of twelve books (although never completely finished), The Aeneid takes us through the turbulent journeys and prophesied triumphs of Aeneas, a warrior and man bound by piety and destiny. Like usual, in every great epic, there are many battles: heads gashed open and gore galore; however, to say that this master piece is just for men would be atrocious, considering that Venus, Aeneas’s mother (the goddess of hunt, extremely beautiful), plays a major role in the book from beginning to end, but, although women are portrayed as a symbol of strength (most of the time, at least), one cannot ignore the invocation to the muse at the very beginning: “I sing of arms and of the man” (3). Through the wars, travels, monsters, and grief that awaits our protagonist, I feel that the relationship between Aeneas and Dido, the queen of Carthage, holds special relevance in my life, for I have loved and lost as well, but one thing may surprise you, I have seen it through the eyes of Dido, not Aeneas. Fortunately, for me, I didn’t have to sacrifice myself, but I did learn to love, relish it, and then, sadly, let it go.
The beginnings of the world are mythologically recorded by the poet Ovid, who lived from 43 BC to 17 or 18 AD. During this time period, he wrote a collection of poetry that spanned the history of Rome’s beginnings up to Julius Caesar. His poetry had political purposes, but was also well known for its codification of love affairs. While it met the standards of traditional epic poetry, the style of his couplets varied in rhythm and length, so it was labelled more ambiguously as “Roman mythological poetry.” In his largest and most famous work, The Metamorphoses covers hundreds of Roman myths. It is comprised of a series of 15 books, each with a different theme or virtue. The theme of Book 10 seemed to center around the love affairs of the gods. Each love story has an initial period of happiness, followed by a tragic event, resulting in the lovers being separated. There is a lot of sex and passion, but also a focus on mourning and sorrow. Nature also plays a large part in the lives of Ovid’s characters. By entwining nature and its animals with the human protagonists of his myths, Ovid wrote a creation epic that appealed to Medieval authors like Boccaccio, as well as writers such as Shakespeare and Dante.
Love, in classical Greek literature, is commonly considered a prominent theme. Love, in present days, always appears in the categories of books, movies, music, etc. Interpreted differently by different people, Love turns into a multi-faceted being. In Plato’s work Symposium, Phaedrus, Pausania, Eryximachus, Aristophane and Agathon, each of them presents a speech to either praise or definite Love. Phaedrus first points out that Love is the primordial god; Pausanias brings the theme of “virtue” into the discussion and categorizes Love into “good” one or “bad” one; Eryximachus introduces the thought of “moderation’ and thinks that Love governs such fields as medicine and music; Aristophanes draws attention to the origin and purposes of Love; Agathon enunciates that the correct way to present an eulogy is first to praise its nature and gifts.
One can hardly deny that in Euripides’ plays women are often portrayed as weak, uncertain, and torn between what they must do and what they can bring themselves to do. Other women appear to be the root of grave evils, or simply perpetrators of heinous crimes. In a day when analysis of characters and plot had yet to be invented, it is easy to see why he might have been thought to be very much against women. However, when looking back with current understanding of what Euripides was doing at the time, armed with knowledge of plot devices and Socratic philosophy, this argument simply does not hold up. In fact, a very strong argument can be made to the opposite, that Euripides was in fact very much in support of women’s rights, and thought they were treated unfairly.
The depiction of the Greek and roman myths are given unique insights from different authors. The Hymn to Demeter and Ovid's Metamorphosis provide and insight to Demeter's love for her daughter, Persephone, and explores its affect on the surrounding environments. The theme of separation and isolation is present in both of these myths, however, in Ovid's Metamorphosis, he symbolizes the environment in important events, has characters playing different roles, and empowers female deities.
Antigone asks Ismene, her sister, if she recognizes how Zeus fulfills them as they live the curse of Oedipus. Although this idea of fulfillment manifests itself specifically in the tragedy of Ismene's and Antigone's radical behavior, the myth also serves as an archetypical model of a woman's position in society, and its patriarchal elements. The influence of Oedipus' curse over his daughters, whether mythological or directly familial, lingers in the ethos of psycho-sexualized European mores. Culturally, this notion characterizes masculinity as being `large and in charge,' the provider and protector; thus, femininity necessarily involves a certain subservience. Such ethos associates femininity with certain gender roles. The story of Oedipus and his daughters, therefore, highlights the overshadowing efficacy of the male presence and it's effects on the female psyche. For instance, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, each paint a picture of the feminine gender role, which predominantly consists of becoming a proper wife, so as to secure a husband, or mother, so as to produce his heir. Essentially, the occidental woman of this period is confined to a life of marriage. In such a patriarchy, what happens to an Antigone, a vicious rejection of all social conventions? And to an Ismene, a passive surrender to patriarchy's nomos? A woman's relationship to society's oppr...
Sappho has put to words a relationship of astonishing importance to her life; that between herself and her precious daughter. Through this fragment of poetry, we see just how important and dear Kleis was to her heart. It is something that could be said true of most mothers towards their daughters, from Eve on down through the centuries, even unto the present day. While it might be thought that the only constant on this earth is change; here, in the arms of a woman, is found something everlasting as a child and its mother take part the time-honored act of love.
The meaning of love is as intricate and unique as the purpose that it serves. It seems that the nature of love is found in the mind, the body and the soul. In Plato’s Symposium each member of the drinking party gives their own interpretation of love. As each speaker engages in their discourse, the concept of love is evaluated from different angles. According to Phaedrus, homoerotic love is the highest form of love and that sacrificing oneself for love will result in a multitude of rewards from the gods, while Pausanias believes that there are two forms of love: Commonly and Heavenly. As a physician, Eryximachus claims that love appears in every part of the universe, including plants and animals and that protection results from love. Before starting his speech, Aristophanes tells the group that his discussion about love may seem completely absurd, as he explains that in the beginning one body had two people who were eventually split in half by Zeus. This is meant to explain why people are constantly looking for their “other half”. Moreover Agathon, the poet the symposium is celebrating, critiques the previous speakers by stating that they failed to praise the god of love. He claims that love rejects feebleness and embraces youthfulness while also implying that love creates justice, courage and wisdom.
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the concept of love seems to vary from character to character. In one case, a god in the form of a man desperately seeks a particular woman and refuses to relent until he has her. In another instance, a female goddess cares deeply for a man and goes to great lengths to protect him from danger. In yet another case, both who are arranged to be married seem indifferent about the matter.
Transformations from one shape or form into another are the central theme in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The popularity and timelessness of this work stems from the manner of story telling. Ovid takes stories relevant to his culture and time period, and weaves them together into one work with a connecting theme of transformation throughout. The thread of humor that runs through Metamorphoses is consistent with the satire and commentary of the work. The theme is presented in the opening lines of Metamorphoses, where the poet invokes the gods, who are responsible for the changes, to look favorably on his efforts to compose. The changes are of many kinds: from human to animal, animal to human, thing to human, human to thing. Some changes are reversed: human to animal to human. Sometimes the transformations are partial, and physical features and personal qualities of the earlier being are preserved in mutated form.
Much like Proserpina who represents the springtime, Perdita exemplifies the natural growth and prosperity that accompanies the season. When Antigonus agrees to take up Perdita and leave her to chance, he understands that she is nature’s child since “Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens / To be thy nurses. Wolves and bears, they say, / Casting their savageness aside, have done / Like offices of pity” (II.iii.185-8). Nature then raises the infant as her own when Perdita takes on natural attributes uncommon among humankind. Before Antigonus abandons the infant Perdita in accordance with Leontes’ orders, he addresses the babe, “Blossom, speed thee well” (III.iii.45), as though Perdita resembles a flower in full bloom.