Essay on The Nature and Role of the Ocean in the Medieval Imagination

For many greeks, Homer's novels were used as a spiritual and moral guide and to demonstrate the Greek religion. The Homeric gods were said to represent ethical values and promote virtuosity. When one thinks of a god, an association with powers and miracles comes to mind along with the singularity of only ONE god. Gods have been portrayed as almighty beings who contribute historical events ranging from uncontrollable Earthly forces to the outcome of a treacherous battle (I.e. Trojan War). Homer contributed an immense understanding of the will of the gods through his epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Allow me to discuss the god's relationship to culture as imagined in both readings.

The film The Sea Inside shares the heart warming real life story of a man named Ramon Sampedro. At the young age of twenty-six he suffered an accident while diving into shallow waters of the ocean that left him a quadriplegic. Now at the age of fifty-four, Ramon must depend on his family to survive. His older brother Jose, Jose’s wife, Manuela and their son Javi do their best to take care of Ramon and make him feel loved. Although Ramon is extremely grateful to his family and friends for their help all these years, he has come to see his life as aggravating and unsatisfying. He wishes to die with the little dignity he has left in his life. However, Ramon’s family is dead set against the thought of assisted suicide and the

Zeus was the child of the Titans, Cronus and Rhea, and was the youngest of all his siblings. Cronus , Zeus’ father, had been warned that one of his children would overthrow him. Cronus knew the consequences, for he had overthrown his father, Uranus. To prevent this from

Zeus, he was the king of the gods and the supreme ruler of people. He originally was a god of the sky. In time, the Greeks regarded him as the only god who concerned him-self with the whole universe. They also associated Zeus with justice and believed that he punished the wicked and rewarded the good. He belonged to the race of Titans, and was the son of Cronus and Rhea. After overthrowing Cronus, Zeus took his father's place and ruled from Mount Olympus. He headed a family of twelve major gods, called the Olympians.

Cronus was a titan and controlled the world along with the other titans when Zeus was born. Cronus usually swallowed his children after they were born, but Rhea took Zeus to Mount Dicte where he was hidden from Cronus. He then came back to Cronus when he was older and made Cronus regurgitate his brothers and sisters. His brothers were Hades and Poseidon and his sisters were Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. He ended up marrying Hera and had eight children with her. He was infamous for his affairs with other women while married to Hera. He had many children and some of importance were Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, Hermes and Dionysus Hercules, Perseus the Muses, the Graces, and Helen of Troy were only a few of his children. He had many children that were gods and he had a few that were heros as

The Christian belief is that no matter what you do wrong or to what extent, you are always able to be forgiven. As long as you are able to realize and admit to what you've done wrong and are willing to pay for your sins and repent, you will always be forgiven in the eyes of God. In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the mariner is willing to repent. After committing his sins against nature, he comes to realize that it is not to be taken for granted. By realizing and expressing the beauty that nature is, the mariner is granted his forgiveness in return for penance; his telling of this story.

“The supreme deity of Greek mythology has his lusty, tempestuous story recast in engaging fashion by Stone”(ProQuest). Zeus was thought of as the father of gods and men. While he did not make them, he protected them, and therefore was considered a father to them. He ruled over the sky and air, and controlled everything that happened in his domains from his throne on Mount Olympus. To gain his throne, he overthrew his father, Cronos, with the help of his siblings, and then dividing up the realms between him and his two elder brothers. Zeus became lord of the sky and rain, Poseidon took the title lord of the sea, and Hades became ruler of the underworld. He then banished his father to the shadowy Tartarus in the underworld. Zeus was the most

There were good things about being a seafaring civilization. As the Ancient Greeks migrated to the coast of the Mediterranean, and Black Seas, they were able to put all of their energy into maritime trade, eventually making them dominant of the busiest waterway in the ancient world. (Acrobatic, 2014)

The sea is the biggest archetype found in the Odyssey; it represents a man’s life, and this is used to show how pride brings destruction. “[Athena] I am anxious about him, poor fellow, kept from his friends… in that island covered with trees, and nothing but the waves all round it, in the very middle of the sea!” (Homer p.g. 12); the waves represent the struggles found on the life of a person, in this case Odysseus, problems caused by his pride after letting his companions “outrageously [kill the cattle of Helios]” (Homer p.g. 146), thinking himself superior than the gods by allowing his companions to defy a direct order of a god, Helios. ”Then I [Odysseus] went away along the island in order to pray to the gods, if any of them might show me some course to sail on” (Homer p.g. 135), after praying to the gods, Odysseus gets a clear course to follow on the sea, after the gods clear the sea of waves, which are a representation of a man’s problems, showing once again how honoring the gods takes away any misfortune brought by

In the religion and mythology of ancient Greece, Poseidon was the god of the sea and of water in general. Unpredictable and often violent, he frequently represented the destructive power of the sea and was also the god of earthquakes. He was closely associated with horses as well. In art, Poseidon was typically shown as a bearded man carrying a trident (a three-pronged fishing spear) and accompanied by a dolphin or a tuna. He traveled over the sea in a chariot pulled by creatures that had the heads and bodies of horses and the tails of fish.

Zeus was the supreme god and ruler of Olympus. He was known by many names: Lord of the Sky, the Rain-god, the Cloud-gatherer, and Zeus the Thunderer. Zeus was the sixth child born to Cronus and Rhea behind Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, Dementer, and Hera. The high soaring eagle was sacred to him, and to the Romans he was known as Jupiter. Zeus was a strong, mighty, awesome, glorious, and wise god. Although, he was very foolish and naïve with hiding his love affairs from Hera.

During the fifth century, a monk named St. Patrick came to Ireland. He had previously been held captive there in his youth, but had escaped and became a monk in Gaul. St. Patrick “…returned to evangelize the land of his former captors.” (Hayes, Baldwin, and Cole). From about AD 500 to 700, the Irish Church grew so much that Ireland was nicknamed the “Island of Saints.” (Mills). Many monasteries were built and the Irish were converted in masses. These converts became some of the earliest missionaries of the Middle Ages, sending monks such as St. Columba to Scotland (Mills).

    The characters of Homer’s The Odyssey struggled with the ineffable reality of the world, therefore they created gods that could carry the burden of their hopeless quest for understanding. The characters created by Homer, because of their intelligence, were finally

To further his point, Homer also illustrates how faith in the Greek gods can guide one to success and uses language fit for deities to draw attention to their insurmountable power. Homer hints at a divine intervention to guide Odysseus to defeat the Cyclops. Odysseus incapacitated Polyphemus “by the gods,” (156) encouraging his men in the endeavor. This is one of many examples of reverence to the gods in The Odyssey, a sentiment that is as strong in Greek culture as it is

One monk that followed in Wilfrid’s footsteps was Saint Benedict Biscop 's who established Roman style churches and monastic communities in Britain. The most prominent of these monastic communities were the monasteries he built the first being a monastery dedicated solely to St. Peter, near the mouth of the river Wear, on the north side this establishment is often referred to as Wearmouth. St. Benedict Biscop wanted Wearmouth to resemble the stone Roman style churches he had always admired and went to France to retrieve masons. When Wearmouth was near completion, he sent for glaziers from France to glaze the windows in the body of the church, chapels, and clerestory these craftsmen were unknown in Britain at the time. They helped the English