Men have idealized prominent female figures in society like Marilyn Monroe as the literary and symbolic emblem of sexual beauty; while her beauty brought her overwhelming popularity, it ultimately lead to her destruction. Similarly, Helen of Troy, a mythic symbol of voluptuous desires, has also been subjected to such actions; in fact, since the times of the Odyssey, many people had joined in on elaborating her mythical beauty. Although both poems agree that Helen is the epitome of beauty, Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “To Helen” focuses on the positive effects of beauty—bringing comfort and joy to the man who beholds her—while H.D.’s “Helen” draws readers’ attention to the negative consequences of overwhelming beauty—an object of the Greeks’ detestation. In his poem “To Helen,” Poe reveals Helen’s profound effect on the speaker by presenting her as a woman of inspiring, idealistic beauty. In the first stanza, the speaker’s exhaustion before seeing Helen is revealed by the alliterative “weary, wayworn traveler,” as if he who looks upon Helen has a sickness that only Helen’s beauty can cure...
A mutual understanding towards many of Poe’s works is that the loss of a lover brings about insanity, but the truth is that in Poe’s works the loss of a young lover leads to depression. This is a theme that is played out in more than one of Poe’s works, but it is most prevalent in the depressing poem Annabel Lee. The speaker is conflicted with losing what is his whole world and his childhood lover. While all is well with both him and the girl alive, an insurmountable depression takes hold once the winds blow out to carry her to the grave. This is a theme that plays out often in his works and has been observed as one of his main inspirations. Within Peter Coviello’s research, he comes to the conclusion that “Within [Poe’s] world, only very young girls, who are not yet encumbered by the revulsions of adult femininity, seem capable of providing a site for stable heterosexual male desire in Poe.” Rather than using a full fledged adult as his lover, he engineered a child into his poem so the lover does not harness the potential to mutate into a monstros...
This essay explores the role of women in Homer's Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Derrick Walcott's Omeros (1990), epics written in very different historical periods. Common to all three epics are women as the transforming figure in a man's life, both in the capacity of a harlot and as wife.
Poe, Edgar Allan, and Arthur Hobson Quinn. Complete Tales and Poems. New ed. : Dorset P., U.S., 1992. Print.
“A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view” (Ibsen). This saying also applied to the times of the Odyssey, an epic constructed by the blind, eight century B.C.E. poet, Homer. As one of the few representatives of ancient Greek social order, the blind, Homer witnessed women as substandard to men, regardless of their actions; many of them existed as seductresses, prostitutes, or slaves. He engraved into his poem women’s roles; the roles of women, as mothers, wives, seductresses, and goddesses are exemplified in this epic, when shown in comparison to the men of that era.
Edgar Allan Poe’s poems The Raven, And Annabel Lee Contrast in many different ways but i'll be highlighting three of them in this paper.The mood of these poems is sad because their true loves die in very different settings and how they handle the grief is different from one going totally insane to the other man being calm and almost a little light hearted about it.
In the beginning, there was Adam. Adam felt incomplete in the Garden of Eden and needed a companion. Eve was created and Adam had his woman. Edgar Allen Poe experimented with man's eternal necessity and drew his final conclusion near the end of his literary career. With the publication of Eureka, Poe made his final realization that tied every one of his love driven short stories together and triumphantly proclaimed: "I have no desire to live since I have done Eureka. I could accomplish nothing more" (n. pag.). Kenneth Graham puts it best: "For Poe, the most notable glimpse of eternity available to man is in the beauty of woman, always ephemeral, always melancholic" (2760). With this idea in mind, Poe shows the consequences of losing the love of one's life through his short stories and his poetry, and also tries to bring reason to his own troubled life. In the works of Poe, a man without his love becomes a man without the most vital part of his spirit and collapses in a horrifying manner.
In the poem To Helen by Edgar Allan Poe he opens up saying “Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore,” he’s comparing this woman’s beauty to an object. He does this throughout the poem and this is what builds the poem. In the poem Helen by H.D. she opens up by saying “All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face” the speaker lets the reader know that Helen is hated by all Greece but, it seems that she’s still or dead. These poems have different feelings and meanings towards Helen.
In the Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, there are many themes that serve to make a comment about the meanings of the story. The theme of women in the poem serves to make these comments but also establishes a point of view on women in the reader. From this point of view, a perspective is developed into the "best" and "worst" in women. Achievement of this is through the characterization of many women with single notable evil qualities. Similar to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, Eve like the many women in the Odyssey brings about pain and suffering for mankind. Contrary to the depicting of women as roots of evil, the reader sees the other traits of women that are most desirable. The roles of these women are achieved by their portrayal throughout the poem. This in return has a significant affect on how the poem and the message that is conveyed.
Homer, Iliad is the narration of the Trojan war. The Trojan war was one of the most important and significant wars of Greek mythology, Homer described how the war was triggered by the abduction of the most beautiful women known as Helen. This paper will argue how the traditional view of this poem is accurate because it indeed was Helens beauty and her selfishness that sparked the Trojan war. Although Helen was not happy about the outcomes of her mistakes. This paper will present how Helen faced many forms of self judgment, how she created many relationships with significant characters, such as Paris, Priam and Aphrodite. Homers portrayal of this significant women was remarkable as we were able to feel her pain and anguish, the readers were
Homer’s Iliad is undoubtedly focused on its male characters: Achilles, primarily, but also Hector and Agamemnon. Nevertheless, it seems that the most crucial characters in the epic are female. Homer uses the characters of Thetis, Andromache, and Helen as a basis for comparison to the male characters. Homer wants his audience to see and understand the folly of his male characters in choosing war over peace, aggression over kindness, and honor over family. While the behavior of these characters clearly speaks for itself, the contrasting attitudes and behaviors of the female characters proffer an alternative; in comparison, the reader can hardly fail to concur with Homer’s message that war, aggression, and honor are misplaced and self-defeating values.
Women were often subjects of intense focus in ancient literary works. In Sarah Pomeroy’s introduction of her text Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, she writes, “Women pervade nearly every genre of classical literature, yet often the bias of the author distorts the information” (x). It is evident in literature that the social roles of women were more restricted than the roles of men. And since the majority of early literature was written by men, misogyny tends to taint much of it. The female characters are usually given negative traits of deception, temptation, selfishness, and seduction. Women were controlled, contained, and exploited. In early literature, women are seen as objects of possession, forces deadly to men, cunning, passive, shameful, and often less honorable than men. Literature reflects the societal beliefs and attitudes of an era and the consistency of these beliefs and attitudes toward women and the roles women play has endured through the centuries in literature. Women begin at a disadvantage according to these societal definitions. In a world run by competing men, women were viewed as property—prizes of contests, booty of battle and the more power men had over these possessions the more prestigious the man. When reading ancient literature one finds that women are often not only prizes, but they were responsible for luring or seducing men into damnation by using their feminine traits.
Sontag introduces her essay to the audience by establishing a focal point around the fact that women viewed today are derivative from the religious perspective of how women were viewed in history. During the ancient times, Greeks and Christians practiced their own methods of analyzing and critiquing women and their beauty. The Greeks believed that the lack of ‘inner” beauty could be compensated with “outer” beauty. They distinguished the two beauties in a way that suggested that both were interconnected to one another within an individual. The preference and priority was given to the ‘outer’ beauty, while the ‘inner’ beauty would be kept at bay. Christianity, on the other hand, gave moral significance to beauty; in defining beauty, or words of physical character to be associated with woman and feminine. Gradually, Sontag introduces the distinguishable beauty between men and women. She does this by recapitulating how in a Christian religion, a woman’s body was parted into many sections to be judged and scrutinized, while men are visua...
The diction of “Annabel Lee” helps create the impression of a fairy tale-like love story. With words such as “maiden” (line 3), “kingdom” (line 8), “beautiful” (line 16), “high-born kinsmen” (line 17), Poe paints a picture of a whimsical, fantastic love story when, in reality, Annabel Lee dies in her girlhood. This is wherein lies the irony: the glamorization of the persona’s love of Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe’s 1849 poem, “Annabel Lee”, explores the common themes of romance and death found in many of Poe’s works. The poem tells the story of a beautiful young maiden named Annabel Lee who resides by the sea. The maiden and the narrator of the poem are deeply in love, however the maiden falls ill and dies, leaving the narrator without his beloved Annabel Lee. Contrary to what many might expect from a poem by Poe and yet still depressing, the poem ends with the narrator accepting Annabel’s death and remains confident that they will forever be together despite her parting.
Edgar Allan Poe has a unique writing style that uses several different elements of literary structure. He uses intrigue vocabulary, repetition, and imagery to better capture the reader’s attention and place them in the story. Edgar Allan Poe’s style is dark, and his is mysterious style of writing appeals to emotion and drama. What might be Poe’s greatest fictitious stories are gothic tend to have the same recurring theme of either death, lost love, or both. His choice of word draws the reader in to engage them to understand the author’s message more clearly. Authors who have a vague short lexicon tend to not engage the reader as much.