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Figurative transformation in ovid's metamorphoses
Ovid metamorphoses book 4 essay
Ovid metamorphoses book 4 essay
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Ovid's Metamorphoses: An Example of Chaos Versus Order
Ovid's Metamorphoses is an example of chaos versus order. I think that is what makes it hard to follow. There is just so much chaos moving from one book to another with barely a transition. I think what the anti-epic is trying to show is that everyone has flaws.
In the beginning of time a flood changed the earth. The earth was made pure and two by two it began to prosper and grow again. This was chaos followed by order. The poem continues with Cupid being angry with Apollo and shooting him with his arrow. Apollo sees the beautiful Daphne and begins to chase her. This was the human instinct of desire and the power of love. She pleads with her father to change her form and help her to escape. She is changed into a laurel tree, but that does not stop Apollo from claiming her as his property. Apollo's son Phaethon drives the chariot of the sun and spins out of control, another example of chaos.
"Book One of Ovid's Metamorphoses establishes the book's theme of metamorphoses with a tale of creation that progresses into human stories leading to the current breed of man. The creation piece is followed by a flood story and a discussion of the ages of mankind. The ages of mankind - gold, silver, bronze, and iron - describe man's slow progression from a good, wholesome society into a miserable, self-destructive one. The next stories concern tales of gods and goddesses and their manipulations of the human population and each other. Book one ends (appropriately) with Phaethon's journey to meet his father, the sun, thus establishing Ovid's theme of quests for change."(auburn. edu)
The book continues with man's desire. Desire can rule the head and cripple the heart. These actions can lead to punishment. We are guided by our feelings. Juno is the jealous wife of Jove. Jove attempted to hide his rape of Io from Juno by transforming her into a white heifer. I don't know if it was love or shame that helped Jove give up Lo. Jove gave her up to Argus. Io could not ask for help because she could not speak. This is symbolic of rape because if she says something it might happen again. Rape changes you physically and mentally. Io's own father Inachus could not help her.
As one of the most well known ancient Roman love poets, Ovid has demonstrated bountiful talents within his writing. When reading myths from his book titled Metamorphoses, you gain an enlightening insight of how he viewed mythology. To Ovid, love was the origin of everything. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that most of his poems relate to the theme of love. However, not all poets are the same and every re-telling of a myth has its own unique perspective. In this paper I will compare and contrast the myth of Medea in Euripides Medea and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 7. I will then explain how Ovid’s approach to love and loss correlate to his general approach to myth as a whole. I will support my belief with evidence from Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 14.
In contrast, Ovid conceived a different purpose for his epic. He wrote fifteen books, compared to Virgil's twelve, with many of his stories originating from Greek and Roman myth, concerned with the transformations of shapes, from the creation of the world to Julius Caesar's death and deification. He focuses on entertaining the reader in a humorous fashion, and rather than establishing Rome's origins in history, he is more concerned with establishing his own fame, for the future ages. These different backgrounds of the two authors illustrate that they each had contrasting agendas for their books. Thus, the portrayal of the gods differs greatly-Virgil's are austere and purposeful, whereas, Ovid's are humorous, reflecting his neoteric style, and intentionally different from the Virgilian gods.
“Am I to admit defeat/ Unable to keep these Trojans and their kings/ From Italy? Forbidden by the Fates, am I?” (1.50-52). Knowing the outcome doesn’t sway the decisions of Juno at all is overcome with rage. It is keen to note that rage is one of the most important themes of The Aeneid and is showed from the poem starts till it ends. Juno and Dido are the two major characters that are affected by this rage. It is Juno who allows Dido to believe that she and Aeneas are married; with hopes that Aeneas would not leave to the build the city of Rome. The intervention of the gods shows how they can easily sway the lives of their mortal men for their own personal desires. For example, when Juno incites rage on the Trojan women allowing them to burn their ships. Virgil clearly shows that aren’t no women of rationality all women are controlled by their emotions. It is clear from the start that Juno is on a man hunt to put an end to the Trojans reign; as result Aeneas becomes a subject of Juno’s rage. Virgil depicts Juno as vengeful Antagonist who tortures a pietious man,
The book metamorphoses wrote by Ovid explain us how first the world was created, and how things that couldn’t be explain have a explanation, but the most important in this book are the lessons, each myth have their lesson, his lesson often refer, too much of something can be bad, like Arachne, there Is nothing wrong in being confident but over confidence is an inconvenient, and ruined her life also Ovid refers a lot in filial piety, we should always respect the Gods or superiors, often the characters in those myth die because they did not respect their parents or Gods .In conclusion this book was wrote to explain and teach us how the world and its element has been created, and that they are gods that we should respect or we will be punish ,and transform into an animal or element.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.
... on the demise of true hard work and how it slowly turned into greed through the example of Jordan Baker. Jordan Baker is continually portrayed as the "modern woman" throughout the novel insinuating that she is a representation of the general populous in the 1920s.She is obviously a successful woman who became rich as she is a professional golfer. The greed she portrays in this scene is hinting that the fact that she used the ideal of greed instead of hardworking to achieve her success.Her willingness to attain what she wants at other peoples expenses is what makes her succeed.This shows how her personal American Dream, and in turn the general American Dream of the 1920s, is flawed.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
Trilling, Lionel. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Critical Essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.
(2) Young people want to experience new things, get a grasp for the world. Older people would rather stick with the same routine that they’ve gotten used to. (3) Phaethon disregards his father’s warning because of his urgent desire to prove to the disbelievers that his father is the Sun God. (4) In this story, Ovid acknowledges that the Sun revolves around the earth and is “pulled” by a force, in this instance, a chariot rather than gravity. We see the Sun laggardly inching its way across the Earth. Furthermore, evaporation of water, deforestation, and atmosphere depletion are all recognized in this story. (5) Flying horses are typically known as pegasuses. The sun’s stallions could be considered similar to Santa’s reindeer, since they’re both creatures that do not actually fly in reality, they have been given names, and can only be controlled by one figure. (6) If not for the Greek era, then we might’ve imagined cross species animals in the Renaissance, as it brings about a second Greek era, and atone for the ideas not yet created. (7) Ovid is saying that oftentimes, humans tend to bite off more than they can chew. As for leadership, Ovid acknowledges that some youths may be overzealous in their ambitions to rise through the ranks and take off impossible responsibility. (8) Ovid is not using horses in the same metaphorical fashion as Socrates. The horses in
In many ways, judging and comparing Vigil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses is inevitable because each of the writers lived at roughly the same time in history, both sought to create a historical work that would endure long past their mortal existences, and while each man was ultimately successful in their endeavors, they achieved their desired goals in vastly different ways. That being said, the epic poem by Ovid is superior because unlike Virgil, whose epic poem utilized a character centered narrative steeped in historical inferences and a theme that celebrated the moral virtues of Greek and Roman society, Ovid defied tradition by creating an intricate narrative that looked
The phrase “I do” is common during many marriage ceremonies today, but what did earlier societies believe about love? In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the point is clearly made that love can be controlled. In Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick is tricked into loving Beatrice by Claudio and Don Pedro. This is very similar to Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which love is triggered by Cupid inflicting his love, or lack thereof, on both people and gods.
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.
Juno, the queen of the gods, is fueled by her rage and fear to harm and change the wheels of fate however she can so that her beloved Argos would not be taken by the Trojans, “This was Juno’s fear...They festered deep within her, galled her still...the Trojan stock she loathed...Her fury inflamed by all this” (Virgil, 48, 28-36). While Juno’s emotional actions affect the other characters, Dido’s emotional actions resulted in her death. After being abandoned by her beloved, Aeneas, Dido was furious and wounded, “So, driven by madness, beaten down by anguish, Dido was fixed on dying, working out in her mind the means, the moment” (Virgil, 144, 594-596). Rational, only in appearance, Dido tells her sister, Anna, to go build her a “pyre in secret, deep inside our courtyard under the open sky” to “obliterate every trace of the man” (Virgil 144). Anna does as her sister tells her to and is deceived by what the pyre was really meant for. Attempting to rid of her emotions by burning every trace of Aeneas, her emotions eventually take over. With her heart torn apart, Dido commits suicide. Dido’s sister on the other hand is hurt but still emotionally stable. Anna is stunned, grieving, and hurt by the actions of her sister, “how very cruel… You have destroyed your life, my sister, mine too” (Virgil 145). Despite playing a part in her sister’s death, Anna remains levelheaded and requests for help to “bathe [Dido’s]
Jocasta’s compliance to the demands of the men around her is revealed through her constant role as a nurturing mother, one who provides emotional connections, but cannot make decisions. This role spans throughout the entire prophecy, throughout her entire life, and throughout her roles as Oedipus’ mother and then his wife. With the arrival of the prophecy that her and Laios’ son is destined to kill his own father and marry his own mother, Jocasta had to leave her child to essentially die in order to evade the prophecy. A mother’s first instinct is typically to protect her child at all costs; however, Jocasta goes against this by actually putting her child in danger in order to protect her husband. This instance proves that the husband seems to be the main focus. Every action seems to be to p...