Myth And Main Characteristics Of Ovid's Pyramus And Thisbe

To fully understand the poems; Metamorphoses and Theogony, one needs to understand more about the writers. Hesiod was a greek poet, who lived around 700BC, and was inspired by muses to write epic poetry. Theogony is considered one of earliest works and concerns itself with the cosmogony, or the origins of the world and theogony, or the gods, and pays specific detail to genealogy (West, 1996: 521). Ovid, on the other hand, was a Roman poet, born in 43 BC – the year after the assassination of Julius Caesar and lived during Augustus’s reign. It’s said that his father took him to Rome to become educated in the ways of

Greek myths are stories that explain the meaning of life and teach moral lessons through the values of heroes, gods and mortals. In Ancient Greece, myths were an important part of the culture, first being told orally and in poems, then seen in architecture and theatre. Homer, the Greek poet, wrote epic poems such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are still revered and read extensively today. Greek myths have carried over to contemporary American culture, appearing in movies, children’s toys, clothing and books and the values of Greek myths are entrenched in today’s society. Notably, heroism is a prominent value that plays a major role in Greek mythology and continues to influence American culture today, as heroes inspire society with their nobility, bravery and patriotism.

Pyramus and Thisbe and Romeo and Juliet are two tragic romance stories that are comparable in many ways. The similar concepts and elements reflected in the two works portray themes of love and tragedy, while also expressing the same types of characters and events. The works of the two writers, Ovid and Shakespeare, were written in completely different time periods, but are remarkably comparable in the senses of character purpose, elements, theme, and events.

Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while the story involving Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, Helena, Oberon and Titania is developing, the rustic gentlemen (Bottom and his friends) are shown rehearsing for a play that they will perform in honor of the upcoming wedding of Theseus (the Duke of Athens) and Hippolyta. The play, “Pyramus and Thisby,” is based on a story that was told by the ancient Roman writer Ovid and retold by Chaucer. The “Pyramus and Thisby” play is not performed until the fifth and final act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By then, as Barton points out, the major problems of Lysander, Demetrius and the rest have all been neatly resolved. As such, the “Pyramus and Thisby” play-within-a-play “seems, in effect, to take place beyond the normal, plot-defined boundaries of comedy” (Barton 110).

The plots of Pyramus and Thisbe and The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet are very similar to one another. For example, it says directly in Pyramus and Thisbe: “But marriage was forbidden by their parents. Yet there’s one thing that parents can’t prevent: The flame of love that burned within them” (Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe 11-13). This directly correlates with the plot of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, with Shakespeare writing “The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it” (Shakespeare II.ii. 127-128). This shows that both couples in each story are in love, which shows a parallel in plot structure. Furthermore, Pyramus and Thisbe also has another plot similarity with The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet: the death of each couple in the

The Greek society was a very intricate and creative society. They built magnificent buildings that towered over villages and wrote beautiful stories and myths that lasted thousands of years. Most of these accomplishments can be traced back to their beliefs in gods and heroes. One of these heroes is the protagonist and epic hero, Odysseus, in the epic poem The Odyssey by Homer. Although people may not see Odysseus as an epic hero due to his lack of control and communication with his men, his strengths loyalty and cleverness make him an epic hero.

Homer and Odyssey were considered to be the two main models of epic representations of the essay according to Ovid and Virgil in their work. There is a lot of influence specifically the Homeric influence when it came to the Virgilian gods. In the book, Juno was compared with the Homeric Hera because she was

To retain its relevance the myth has evolved, with different authors changing some plot setting to fit the audience, hence making it take different versions from antiquity to renaissance and later to the modern world. In Ovid’s Book 5,

According to Douglass C. Perry, Denis "Dyack says, 'I would go as far to say that all literature and all entertainment are influenced by myth,' He says that we are completely immersed in myth even though we may not realize

n Ovid's Metamorphoses, Pyramus and Thisbe is a story is about a couple, who live in Babylon, the city of Queen Semiramis. They lived in houses so close together that one wall was common to both. Pyramus and Thisbe grew up side by side and they learned to love each other very much. Pyramus and Thisbe wanted to marry each other, but their parents forbade them. Their families hated each other and forbade Pyramus and Thisbe to marry. The star-crossed lovers discovered a little crack in the wall that separates their houses and through it they were able to whisper back and forth. They talked and whispered, but they couldn’t touch or feel each other

Myths are universal and transcendent through time; many ancient myths are seen recreated in modern times. The author uses Oedipus as a way of comparing myth to psychology. Dreams have also played a major role in civilization; the people who could interpret dreams can understand and create myths.

By contrast, Ovid's motives in narrating myths in the Metamorphoses are rarely ulterior.  Most myths are free of the religious implications and the moralistic nuances that his Greek predecessors used as the backbone of their plays and poems.  Instead, Ovid chooses to entertain his readership by his brilliant language and delight them with not only absorbing tales, but also with his masterful talent of weaving narratives together.  Let us not be overzealous and label Ovid as an entertainer, for his themes and purpose change as quickly as the stories he narrates.  Rather, it is safer to say that Ovid relieves his audience of any ulterior religious or moral meaning.

There were many catastrophes written by many people that we have read and scanned as children and we have always wondered where they come from. The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare was truly a tragedy. However, it was copied from another story called Pyramus and Thisbe by Ovid. These two stories were similar, but they were both so similar to the point where you could say that Shakespeare was basically copying Ovid. When these peculiar stories were compared, they were found rather similar and somehow different to the extent of where we may also contrast them.

While the plots of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and “Pyramus and Thisbe” reflect each other through

I really enjoyed learning about the myth of Pygamlion and his love for sculpting. I have never heard of this myth before and I found it very interesting. I also found it interesting that you liked Ovid’s story in Metamorphoses better than Apollodorus’ version. I too chose a myth that was from Metamorphoses and Apollodorus and found that I liked Ovid’s version better for similar reasons. Ovid was much more descriptive and attentive to detail with his tale and you seem to have found the same attributes in your stories as well. Ovid might just be a more detail-oriented writer than the ancient Greeks, which make his stories more appealing than the original ancient Greek myths.