The Relationship Between Coriolanus and Volumnia
The speech patterns of "Coriolanus" reveal the title character's psychological turmoil. Churning with self-doubt about his determination, his relationship with those around him, and his relationship with his mother, Coriolanus is a man at the mercy of his environment. The environment that shapes Coriolanus is the instruction he receives from his mother Volumnia.1 In his relationship with his mother, Coriolanus plays the weak and subservient role. Volumnia's treatment of Coriolanus during his childhood and later, when he is an adult, profoundly molds Coriolanus. Even when absent in scenes, Coriolanus's mother acts as an invisible force, shaping Coriolanus's interactions with other characters in the play. Volumnia's desires and ways of speaking manifest themselves in Coriolanus's valor and also in his stubbornness. Coriolanus attempts to recreate the relationship between himself and his mother with other characters and groups in the play. However, when he recreates this relationship with others, he reverses his role in the relationship by making himself the dominant party.
The way Volumnia speaks to Coriolanus illustrates her dominant position in their relationship. Volumnia speaks unlike the other women in the play. Her language conveys the disposition of a warrior and is filled with references to death and blood. In her description of how she raised Coriolanus, she speaks of blood: "The breasts of Hecuba/ When she did suckle Hector looked not lovelier/ Than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood/ At Grecian sword, contemning." (1.3.37-40). Volumnia unlike Coriolanus's wife, Virgilia, does not seem content to stay at home and sew. With great enthusias...
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Adelman, Janet. "'Anger's My Meat': Feeding, Dependency and Aggression in Coriolanus ." In Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays. ed. Murray Schwartz and Coppelia Kahn, 129-150. Baltimore, 1980.
Barton, Ann. "Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare's Coriolanus ." In William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, ed. Harold Bloom, 123- 147. New York, 1988.
Barzilai, Shuli (1991). Shakespeare's Coriolanus and the Compulsion to Repeat. Hebrew Univ. Studies in Lit. 19: 85-105.
Cavell, Stanley. (1985). Who does the wolf love? Coriolanus and the interpretation of politics. In Parker, P. & Hartman, G. (ed.), Shakespeare and the question of theory. New York: Methuen.
Shakespeare, William. Coriolanus , ed. John Dover Wilson. Cambridge, 1969.
Jagendorf, Zvi. (1990). Coriolanus: body politic and private parts. Shakespeare Quarterly, 41(4), pp. 455-469.
Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each—through her vices or virtues—helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks. Before we delve into the traits of individual characters, it is important to understand certain assumptions about women that prevailed in the Homeric Age. By modern standards, the Ancient Greeks would be considered a rabidly misogynistic culture. Indeed, the notoriously sour Boetian playwright Hesiod-- who wrote about fifty years before Homer-- proclaimed "Zeus who thunders on high made women to be evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil (Theogony 600).
In the play Coriolanus, the man by with the play is named is a complicated individual. There is complexity to his personality, and subtlety to his emotions. In Act III, from III.ii.91 to 139, Coriolanus goes through an extreme shift of point of view and emotion. He has a complete reversal from not wanting compromise with the common people citizens to begrudgingly accepting that he must. For any actor trying to play Coriolanus, the importance of understanding this scene is important to understanding Coriolanus as a whole.
Solomon, Andrew. "A Reading of the Tempest." In Shakespeare's Late Plays. Ed. Richard C. Tobias and Paul G. Zolbrod. Athens: Ohio UP, 1974. 232.
Jones, Eldred. "Othello- An Interpretation" Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. (page 39-55)
The Role of the Nurse in Her Relationship with Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
One popular dissecting instrument of any Shakespearean character is the modern tool of psychoanalysis. Many of Shakespeare's great tragic heroes-Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello, to name a few-have all been understood by this method of plying back and interpreting the layers of motivation and desire that constitute every individual. Add to this list Shakespeare's Roman warrior Coriolanus. His strong maternal ties coupled with his aggressive and intractable nature have been ideal fodder for modern psychoanalytic interpretation. This interpretation, however, falls within a larger, political context. For despite the fact that Coriolanus is a tragedy largely because of the foibles of its title character, its first and most lasting impression is that it is a political play. Indeed, the opening scene presents the audience with a rebellious throng of plebeians hungry for grain that is being hoarded by the patricians. When Menenius, a patrician mouthpiece, enters the scene a dialectic is immediately established, and the members of the audience inexorably find themselves on one side or the other of this dialectic, depending, most likely, on their particular station in life.
Clark, W.G. and Aldis Wright, eds. Introduction. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New York: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., n. d.
Bradley, A.C.. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.
Jones, Eldred. "Othello- An Interpretation" Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994.
For centuries women have fought to obtain basic civil rights and today, they are still fighting to obtain equal rights. From the right to vote to their right to birth control, women have always been trying to assert their own independence in order to expand their freedom. While much progress has been made, there is still room for improvement. However, the evolution of women’s rights and the role of women is mirrored in literature and can be used to illustrate the progression throughout history. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is no different. Through the character Jocasta, Sophocles creates a counterpart to Oedipus and uses her to reveal the oppression of women by contrasting her and Oedipus’ relationships and reactions to the prophecy. Throughout the play Oedipus Rex, Sophocles illustrates Jocasta’s vulnerability and supportive nature in order to women as fragile, doting, and obedient wives and mothers to facilitate the necessity of self-assertion.
“Lysistrata” is a tale which is centered around an Athenian woman named Lysistrata and her comrades who have taken control of the Acropolis in Athens. Lysistrata explains to the old men how the women have seized the Acropolis to keep men from using the money to make war and to keep dishonest officials from stealing the money. The opening scene of “Lysistrata” enacts the stereotypical and traditional characterization of women in Greece and also distances Lysistrata from this overused expression, housewife character. The audience is met with a woman, Lysistrata, who is furious with the other women from her country because they have not come to discuss war with her. The basic premise of the play is, Lysistrata coming up with a plan to put an end to the Peloponnesian War which is currently being fought by the men. After rounding up the women, she encourages them to withhold sex until the men agree to stop fighting. The women are difficult to convince, although eventually they agree to the plan. Lysistrata also tells the women if they are beaten, they may give in, since sex which results from violence will not please the men. Finally, all the women join Lysistrata in taking an oath to withhold sex from their mates. As a result of the women refraining from pleasing their husbands until they stop fighting the war, the play revolves around a battle of the sexes. The battle between the women and men is the literal conflict of the play. The war being fought between the men is a figurative used to lure the reader to the actual conflict of the play which is the battle between men and women.
Keyishan, Harry. The Shapes of Revenge: Victimization, Vengeance, and Vindictiveness in Shakespeare. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1995.
No one could survive a cruel world without a mother figure, confidante or bestfriend. The nurse performs all these roles to help Juliet fulfill what her heart desires First, the nurse proves that she is the one who
Equally important The Nurse role in the story is to act as a go between Romeo and Juliet,
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Mowat, Barbara A., ed. And Westine, ed. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.