The Ideas Of Tropes In The Faerie Queene And Eurydice

Titania is uncertain whether her vision is a dream or reality, because dreams are soon

This contrasts to the unrhymed iambic pentameter of the Athenians. Because the meters are in fact inverses of each other, it shows how, although both worlds are similar on the surface, they are very different at the core. Both the Athenians and the fairies were struggling with complexities of love. Demetrius with Helena, Lysander with Hermia, and Oberon with Titania all fought the impending chaos that so often accompanied love. The only difference between the squabbling couples was their nature. In the case of Demetrius, Helena, Lysander and Hermia, they were nothing more than mortals. However, the fairies were considered magical beings of great power. Their presence was intimidating and their command was to be respected. By giving end rhyme to the fairies, Shakespeare set them apart intellectually from the lovers and they became more dignified and lyrical in their nature. Because Shakespeare blurred the lines of dominance between the lovers and the fairies through similar meter while maintaining the stereotypical fairy personality of the time, he induced a sense of chaos. Social order began to crumble and emotional breakdowns started soon after.

He maintains his focus on Greek myths not only because of the sheer number of myths around the world, making it impossible to interpret and clarify them all, but also because European men, who would have been familiar with the myths from Greece, write most of the classics we analyze. He explains that these myths are not only a part of them but also “so much a part of the fabric of our consciousness, of our unconscious really, that we scarcely notice” (Foster, 51). Which suggests that, we can recognize Greek myths even if we do not realize it. With this simple fact presented to us, we no longer wonder why allusions to Greek myths have been used since they emerged and are still employed today. Myths are often exercised as “overt subject matter for poems and paintings and operas and novels” but more often “writers have…borrowed from and emulated” these myths (Foster, 52, 53). Instead of explaining every detail about every character, place or moment authors rely on other stories, such as myths, to expand and develop their tale. The writer will subtly hint at myths and hope you recognize their allusions to these old legends. Since we established that, we know these myths, whether consciously or not, we can take these allusions and decipher any hidden meanings the author has for us, giving each story a new level.

The female characters portrayed in Aeschylus and Sophocles’ works have considerably different personalities and roles, yet those females all have the common weaknesses of being short-sighted and stubborn. They intensify the conflicts within their families while being inconsiderate of the impacts that they may bring to their nations and societies, which leads to consequences that they are incapable of taking responsibilities for. Clytemnestra and Antigone, two major characters in their respective author’s works, possess different motivations for their deeds in the stories. While Clytemnestra is driven by the desire of revenge to murder her husband Agamemnon, Antigone acts against Creon’s will and strives to properly bury her brother. Despite having different motivations and personalities, Clytemnestra and Antigone both commit

Envy is a sin that poisons the sinner and is self-destructive in nature. The common perception of envy is that it is an emotion that, much like jealousy, that comes from a desire to possess something that someone else has. However, envy goes a step further and causes an individual to not only desire what someone else has, but to also wish that the other person did not have it at all. Spenser uses the conventional view of envy stated above in conjunction with some unconventional imagery in order to elaborate on the nature and implications of being an envious person. In doing this Spenser is able to teach to reader an aspect of envy that they may not already know or understand. In his portrayal of envy in book one of The Faerie Queene, Spenser is trying to convey to his readers that people who are envious are trapped in and endless cycle of envy that leads to nothing but unhappiness and misery. Spenser’s interpretation of envy, like the other deadly sins in the house of pride, can be broken down into 4 images: the animal that he rides, his appearance, how he behaves, and the ailment he has. This paper will use the first three of these images to show how Spenser’s depiction of Envy is meant to teach the reader that the sin of envy can only lead to perpetual unhappiness and misery.

Sarah Ruhl’s play, Eurydice, is a devastating story battling love, grief, life, and death. Although it is set during the 1950’s, the play manages to encompass the ancient Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. The three most evident themes of this play are recurring death, fleeting happiness, and the power of love. The main conflict in this play is ultimately about the painful choice that comes with death; this is often caused by the King of the Underworld. One of the most impressive parts of this play is the ability to change the way the play is perceived through design.

The fairies and the fairy realm have many responsibilities in this play. The most important of which is that they are the cause of much of the conflict and comedy within this story. They represent mischievousness and pleasantry which gives the play most of its emotion and feeling. They relate to humans because they make mistakes but differ in the fact that they do not understand the human world.

Adults historically love to glorify the idealism and emotionality of childhood through storytelling. From Mark Twain’s perennial wild boy Huckleberry Finn, who befriends a runaway slave despite the prejudices of adult society, to Hiccup of the 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon, the only one of his village who recognizes that dragons are not evil but actually kind animals, American media has no shortage of children who are somehow able to see more than their adult counterparts. Patricia Read Russell’s 1983 essay “Parallel Romantic Fantasies: Barrie's Peter Pan and Spielberg's E.T.: The Extraterrestrial” traces the echos of the 1904 play Peter Pan in Spielberg's then recent film, E.T. and one of the parallels she highlights is this very concept. Russell borrows from Wordsworth in her essay to concisely describe the trope of a child’s ability to see more clearly than adults, referring to it as the “visionary gleam”. Russell’s essay underlines the presence of this trope in E. T.’s protagonist, a ten-year-old boy named Elliot, and in his bond with the title character, a friendly lost alien. Over twenty-five years later, the same trope is explored in Disney’s parody film Enchanted but through the lense of a young girl. The concept of the “visionary gleam” of childhood perpetuated by Spielberg’s film and Enchanted reflects an inherent desire of adults to return to a simpler, more emotionally driven period of their lives which may or may not have actually existed, and this

When the title of a play is a character's name, it is normally assumed that the character is the protagonist of the play. In Sophocles' Antigone, most people probably believe Antigone to be the tragic heroine, even after they have finished watching the play. It may be argued, however, that Creon, not Antigone, is the tragic character. When we examine the nature and concept of the Greek Tragedy and what it means to be a tragic character, it becomes clear that Creon is indeed the tragic hero of the play Antigone.

Euripides and Sophocles wrote powerful tragedies that remain influential to this day. The vast majority of work recovered from this time is by male authorship. What remains about women of this time is written through the lens of male authors’ perspective and beliefs about the role of women in Greek culture. The works of these two playwrights frequently characterize women as unstable and dangerous. Agave, Antigone, and Medea are all undoubtedly the driving force behind the tragic action in these plays. It is their choices that lead to the pain and death of the people around them. Through an examination of the evidence from three separate works, Antigone, The Bacchae, and The Medea, the role of women in ancient Greek tragedy becomes clear. The actions of Agave, Antigone, and Medea repeatedly prove their characters instability and danger.

Reception of Classical Mythology, Paper 2 Roger T. Macfarlane 21 February 2011 ClCv241.001 OGCMA1050TrojanWarTroyFall_Shakespeare Priam’s Slaughter in the Player’s Speech of Hamlet Hamlet’s Player’s Speech (2.2.452ff.) is structurally critical to the tragedy’s plot. The death of Priam plays a thematically important role. Hamlet’s request for the actors’ leader to relate “Priam’s slaughter” from “Aeneas’ tale to Dido” (i.e. Vergil’s Aeneid 2.506-58) introduces through mythological shorthand a rich set of narrative analogues into the Danish court. Fresh from university at Wittemberg, Hamlet manifests a characterizing propensity to classicizing references.1

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream shows four young lovers navigating their tumultuous romances, the duke preparing for his wedding, a set of fairies intervening with the young lovers, and a play, "The most lamentable / comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus / and Thisbe" (lines 11-13). The duke's wedding, the relationships of the four lovers, the fairies, and the play that is produced are subplots in A Midsummer Night's Dream which provide depth to the play through the parallels and contrasts created. And throughout the play, the theme of appearances not always being reality is stressed through the dream-like atmosphere that is created when characters are found sleeping and magic is used.

The poem, "The Faerie Queene", is a story about a courageous knight who goes through great trials and fights monsters. This in itself is entertaining but, it also has many allegorical references to Christianity. Many times Spenser talks about things when in reality he's really talking something closer to home. For instance, this faerie land he talks about sounds like he is referring to England, the country where he's from. Also, the title Faerie Queene itself is seems to represent Queen Elizabeth, the Queen of England. Redcrosse, the hero of the poem, is a major part of this allegory. He is called the "Knight of Holinesse" which is a reference to being holy and worshiping God. He represents the lonely Christian on a journey to put

This assignment will discuss the variation of the magnitude of the public issues that may be interpreted as psychological issues that are related to Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene using the passage from Book II, canto xii. This will relate to some of the separate Books virtues and will include discussion of the critical resources Harold Skulsky, “Spenser's Despair Episode and the Theology of Doubt.” and Frederic Ives Carpenter, “Spenser's Cave of Despair.” The deeper meanings and and virtues within the six books of The Faerie Queene, however, are a matter of interpretation and therefore tend to lead to differing results from any given critic.

The Faerie Queene is an important romantic epic that more than being just poetry, represents the protestant imagery in terms of kinds of individual virtue , the forces of temptation and human weaknesses to which the greatest of persons can succumb and, of course, the humanist ideals of its time. His author, Edmund Spenser, makes use of biblical and classic allegories to tell his story, that more than have been a religious writing, the poem’s purpose was to educate, to turn young men into gentlemen and to make a declaration of faith in England. However, the more important purpose of the Faerie Queene is its allegory, the meaning behind its characters and events. The story's setting is a fanciful "faerie land," that