...with beauty and truth. The maxim, “Nothing in Excess”, is exemplified and defied in Greek myths through the figures Heracles, Niobe, Oedipus and Creon. Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcmena, exhibited excessive mortal strength from infant to adult. When Heracles was eight months old, Hera, desiring his death, sent two serpents to Heracles’ bed; but because of his excessive strength he strangled the serpents with his bare hands. Another example of “the strength of stout Heracles” (Theogony 332) is when he kills Linus, his tutor, in self-defense. Hera, still persecuting Heracles, drove him mad, and as a result he killed his wife, Megara, and his children, flinging them into the fire. Arriving at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the Pythian priestess told Heracles to reside in Tiryns, serving Eurystheus for twelve years and to perform ten labors to be purified for his crime (Parada). His first labor was to destroy the Nemean Lion. Heracles first shot him with an arrow, but when he perceived that the animal was invincible, he broke its neck with his bare hands. Furthermore, in Torone, Heracles was challenged to wrestle by Polygonus and Telegonous and he killed both in the wrestling match (Parada). Heracles possessed extreme super-human strength that he could not moderate. This lack of control led to the divine punishments, such as the ten labors, he received from the gods. Another myth that shows...
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...Schedule of Readings & Lecture Topics: Fall 2012 | Lecture Topic | Read beforehand | | | | M. Sept. 10 | Welcom to class | | W. Sept. 12 | Intro to Mythology | T 3-22 (T=Thury) | M. Sept. 17 | The Oedipus Myth | ACM 235-236 (nos. 66-68)Oedipus the King, T 305-353 | W. Sept. 19 | Oedipus Rex 1 | Finish or re-read T 305-353 | M. Sept. 24 | Oedipus Rex 2 | Lévi-Strauss, T 354-369 | W. Sept. 26 | Oedipus and Structuralism | “ | M. Oct. 1 | Gilgamesh | The Epic of Gilgamesh, T 192-227 | W. Oct. 3 | No class—UMich Plato conf. | | M. Oct. 8 | Thanksgiving | | W. Oct. 10 | Gilgamesh and Structuralism | G.S. Kirk “A Lévi-Straussian Analysis of G.”, T 228-238 | M. Oct. 15 | Ritual & Liminality | Victor Turner, “Forest,” T 417-429 | W. Oct. 17 | Demeter & Ritual | Hom. Hymn to Demeter, T 430-448 | M. Oct. 22 | Tricksters: Prometheus | T 381-383, 396-402, 27-29, 38-41Review Lévi-Strauss, T 280-294 | W. Oct. 24 | Tricksters: Hermes | Hom. Hymn to Hermes, ACM 187-197 | M. Oct. 29 | Dionysus: Myth & Bacchae | T 495, 509-514Euripides, Bacchae (44-83) | W. Oct. 31 | Bacchae | ACM 21-22 (D1), 47 (M2), 48 (M4), 212-213 (Ode 2.19), 394 (1130) | M. Nov. 5 | Exam 1 | Odyssey Books 1-8 | W. Nov. 7 | Hesiod Theogony 1 | Hesiod Theogony ACM 129-160 | M. Nov. 12 | Hesiod Theogony 2 | Same | W. Nov. 14 | | | M. Nov. 19 | | | W. Nov. 21 | Hesiod Works and Days | Hesiod “The Ages of Man” T 41-44 | M. Nov. 26 | | | W. Nov. 28...
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...Professor Larkin ELIT2055-B 31 March 2014 The Hero’s Journey: Comparing and Contrasting Heroes Joseph Campbell was an American psychologist and mythological researcher. In his lifelong research, Campbell discovered many common patterns running through hero myths and stories from around the world. Years of research lead Campbell to discover several basic stages that almost every hero-quest goes through (no matter what culture the myth is a part of). He calls this common structure “the monomyth” (Hero’s Journey). The “hero’s journey” appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of The Hero, who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the family, group, tribe, or civilization. There are twelve steps, or stages, of the typical “Hero’s Journey”. The twelve steps are: The ordinary world, the call to adventure, refusal of the call, meeting with the mentor, crossing the threshold, a test, the approach, the ordeal, the reward, the road back, the resurrection, and the return with the elixir, or reward. As I previously stated, Campbell’s monomyth works best with the traditional form of the quest such as in folk and fairy tales, myths, legends, and other fantasies. However, it can be applied to many different genres or types of stories. A quest does not have to include swords and monsters. It can just as easily occur in the real world. The monomyth is ageless and universal, and exists anywhere...
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...Hamartia in Oedipus the King According to the Aristotelian characteristics of good tragedy, the tragic character should not fall due to either excessive virtue or excessive wickedness, but due to what Aristotle called hamartia. Hamartia may be interpreted as either a flaw in character or an error in judgement. Oedipus, the tragic character in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, certainly makes several such mistakes; however, the pervasive pattern of his judgemental errors seems to indicate a basic character flaw that precipitates them. Oedipus’ character flaw is ego. This is made evident in the opening lines of the prologue when he states "Here I am myself--you all know me, the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus." (ll. 7-9) His conceit is the root cause of a number of related problems. Among these are recklessness, disrespect, and stubbornness. Oedipus displays an attitude of recklessness and disrespect throughout the play. When he makes his proclamation and no one confesses to the murder of Laius, Oedipus loses patience immediately and rushes into his curse. Later, he displays a short temper to Tiresias: "You, you scum of the earth . . . out with it, once and for all!," (ll. 381, 383) and "Enough! Such filth from him? Insufferable--what, still alive? Get out--faster, back where you came from--vanish!" (ll. 490-492) If an unwillingness to listen may be considered stubbornness, certainly Oedipus would take advice from no one who would tell him to drop the matter of his...
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...Oedipus the King: The Hero of Personal Autonomy in Inevitable Fate Tragedy Abstract: Oedipus the King, written by Sophocles, who was one of Athens’s three great tragic dramatists, is an indisputably classical tragedy in literature history. And Oedipus’s tragic fate, murdering his father and marrying his mother, is the most controversial point. This paper mainly analyzes the conflict between Oedipus’s spirit of personal autonomy and the oracle predetermined fate, and the causes of Oedipus’s inevitable tragedy. Key word: Oedipus; personal autonomy; fate; inevitability Introduction Oedipus the King is based on a Greek myth that Oedipus killed his father and married to his mother, showing the Greek tragedy’s conflict rich of typical significance...
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...------------------------------------------------- Ishmael Question 1 In the novel, Ishmael, the phrase that the gorilla uses to represent society’s creation of a reality for an individual and a group is Mother Culture Question 2 at the end of the novel, the narrator expresses the idea that what he wants from Ishmael is a program Question 3 Daniel Quinn wrote the novel “Ishmael” in the twentieth century Question 4 According to Ishmael, if the takers accumulate knowledge about what works well for things, the leavers accumulate knowledge about what works well for people Question 5 The premise being acted out by Leaver cultures, according to the novel, Ishmael, is humanity belongs to the world Question 6 In the novel, Ishmael, the gorilla says there are two stories being enacted by humans at the present time: the takers and the leavers Question 7 Based on the text of the novel Ishmael, complete the following analogy. The Takers are to the Leavers as Cain is to Abel Question 9 In the novel, Ishmael, the dialogue eventually deals with a biblical story. Which biblical story is a key part of the novel? Garden of Eden Question 10 There are two trees in the biblical story of the garden of Eden, as recounted by Ishmael. One tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The other tree is the tree of Life Question 11 According to the novel, Ishmael, if the Takers know the one right way to live, Leavers know the way that they prefer to live Question 12 ...
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...Predestination of Oedipus Sophocles’s classic greek myth Oedipus Rex tells the complicated story of Oedipus’s life, status, and destination. Unlike other plays, expected outcome is known to the audience before it happens in the play. Based on a prophecy, King of Thebes will be killed by his thrown away son, the protagonist, Oedipus. At the beginning of the play, not only Oedipus’s destination is exposed to the public, but also his father, King Laius and his mother, Queen Jocasta’s destination is also set by means of prophecy. Oedipus, son of Laius, born with destination preset to Corinth where he was delivered to King Polybus and Queen Merope by a messenger. Since Polybus and Queen couldn’t have any children, they gladly accepted Oedipus as their child. Growing up Oedipus later found out that Polybus and Merope are not his real parents. He has also learned from the Oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Another example of predestination is set here by the author. After getting the news, Oedipus determined to find out his real father. Oedipus could not accept the foreknowledge set by the gods. He ran away from Corinth in search of his parents and on the way he kills his father without knowing his real identity. He tried to run away from his fate but ultimately he ran into it. In later scenes, when he moved to Thebes, he marries his mother, Queen Jocasta, without knowing her real identity. Throughout the scenes, Oedipus is only fulfilling his predestined fate...
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...lead to his/her downfall. The downfall could be anything from mental disturbance to even death. The concept of a tragic hero can definitely be seen in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s King Lear. Even though there are differences in both the writing, they also have some similarities. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the title character was the king of Thebes, and his city was infected with a poisonous plague. To discover the source of the plague and to get rid of it, the Oracle of Delphi was called. It turned out to be that the only way to get rid of plague would be to banish the killer of the former ruler of Thebes, Laius, from the city-state. Oedipus was Laius’s and Jocasta’s son, which was given to shepherd and was order to kill Oedipus, because it was found out that he would kill his father and sleep with his mother. He was very shocked after hearing this because he did not believe that he would ever do something like that. Jocasta then mention how Laius was killed on the three-way intersection. Oedipus found this incident very familiar because it was he who killed Laius along with other men at such intersection. Later on in the play it was found that Oedipus was brought to Thebes as an orphan by a shepherd and that his father was Laius. And because Jocasta was wife of Laius, she is also the mother of Oedipus. So what Tiresias...
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...Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes, a tragic hero in the Greek mythology. Oedipus accidentally fulfilled the prophecy and despite his efforts not to, he end up killing his father and marrying his mother, and brought disaster to his city and family. It is well known that “Oedipus represents two enduring themes of Greek myth and drama: the flawed nature of humanity and an individual's role in the course of destiny in a harsh universe”. Is Oedipus character his destiny? Is what happens to Oedipus his fault, why or why not? First of all, yes, Oedipus character is his destiny. Indeed, before the play, the final outcome of the play is known before Oedipus is even born. And in fact, "his life is clouded with the presage of disaster; he was destined to one day kill his father and to become his own mother's husband". We can say that Oedipus destiny was pre-determined. No matter how good person he was, in one way or another he would have fulfilled the prophecy and end up in disaster. So, due to the prophecy, Oedipus had only a small part in his own downfall. But, what happened to Oedipus is also his fault. Indeed, he is too determined to find out who he is and it shouldn't be so important to him. He is also too proud to listen to the gods; he thinks he can get out of following through on his fate. Oedipus was a very proud man. I think his pride was his biggest character flaw and because of this pride, the conclusion of the play was tragic. To conclude, the King...
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...The Dominance of Fate Fate was of great concern to the Greeks, and its workings resonate through many of their myths and texts. We see countless characters who go to great lengths in attempts to alter fate, even if they know such an aim to be futile. The inability of any mortal or immortal to change prescribed outcomes stems from the three Fates: sisters Clotho, who spins the thread of life; Lachesis, who assigns each person’s destiny; and Atropos, who carries the scissors to snip the thread of life at its end. These three divinities pervade all the stories of Greek myth, whether they be stories of gods, goddesses, demigods, heroes, or mortals and regardless of the exploits recounted. Nothing can be done to alter or prolong the destiny of one’s life, regardless of the number of preparations or precautions taken. This inflexibility applies just as much to Zeus as to the lowliest mortal, as we see in Zeus’s hounding of Prometheus to divulge the name of the woman who will bear the offspring that one day will kill him. Though this lesson is somewhat consoling—the way of the world cannot be bent to match the whims of those in authority—it is also very disturbing. The prospect of free will seems rather remote, and even acts of great valor and bravery seem completely useless. The myths provide an interesting counterpoint to this uselessness, however. In virtually all the stories in which a character does everything in his power to block a negative fate, and yet falls prey to it,...
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...Oedipus Rex and King Lear are, as their titles announce, both about kings. These two plays are similar in theme and in the questions they pose to the audience. The kings in each play both fall from the pinnacle of power to become the most loathed of all classes in society; Oedipus discovers that he is a murderer and committer of incest, and Lear becomes a mad beggar. Misjudgments occur in both plays, and the same questions about the gods, fate, and free will are posed. In spite of these similarities, however, the final effects of these two plays differ greatly. For me, as I read Oedipus Rex again this fall, I experienced a sensation nearly of agony. Because I had already known the myth as well as read the play, I was in the Greek's position of foreknowledge. This caused me to feel acutely the irony of Oedipus' confident declarations that the murderer of Laius should be "driven from every house, / Being, as he is, corruption itself to us," and again on the next page, As for the criminal, I pray to God— Whether it be a lurking thief, or one of a number— I pray that that man's life be consumed in evil and wretchedness. And as for me, this curse applies no less If it should turn out that the culprit is my guest here, Sharing my hearth. (13-14) Oedipus has absolutely no idea that the murderer he is denouncing so vehemently is, in fact, himself. The fact that the reader knows that, and he does not, becomes increasintly painful, especially in the line where Oedipus...
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...divinity symbolize it. Apollo was the god of knowledge and medicine, in many Greek myths the quest for knowledge, or attaining too much knowledge altogether was a common source of tragedy. Ancient Greek cultures believed that even if mortals had the knowledge they sought, once they acquired it they did not know what to do with it. There are many examples in Greek myth that plainly show how knowledge eventually leads to tragedy. For instance, Oedipus’ search for knowledge of the king’s murderer ends up becoming his demise and the major source of pain in his life. Oedipus needed to find out why Thebes was suffering from a plague, so he sent Creon to the temple of Delphi to ask Apollo what he could do to life the plague from his people. As the oracle of Apollo Tiresias goes to Thebes and tells him that the person responsible for the death of the prior king, king Laius was living amongst them, and the plague would only be lifted once they found the murderer. In the quest for the knowledge that would save his people, King Oedipus summoned the messenger that was given the task of killing the newborn son of King Laius (in an attempt to escape the prophesy that would kill his father and wed his mother). Oedipus was angered by the messenger’s reluctance to answer his questions about the death of King Laius and threatened to kill him if he did not speak. Even though the messenger fearfully warns him that if Oedipus is who he thinks then he does not want to hear...
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...AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY DIPLOMA IN SOCIAL WORK AND DEVELOLPMENT STUDIES NAME: HEZEKIAH KELLY .O. COURSE CODE: SWD114 DATE: MAY 25TH 2013 SIGMUND FREUD’S STAGES OF PSYCHO-SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) observed that during the predictable stages of early childhood development, the child's behavior is oriented towards certain parts of his or her body, e.g. the mouth during breast-feeding, the anus during toilet-training. He proposed that adult neurosis (functional mental disorder) often is rooted in childhood sexuality; therefore, said neurotic adult behaviors were manifestations of childhood sexual fantasy and desire. That is because human beings are born "polymorphous", infants can derive sexual pleasure from any part of their bodies, and that socialization directs the instinctual libidinal drives into adult heterosexuality.[3] Given the predictable timeline of childhood behavior, he proposed "libido development" as a model of normal childhood sexual development, wherein the child progresses through five psychosexual stages – the oral; the anal; the phallic; the latent; and the genital – in which the source pleasure is in a different erogenous zone. Freudian psychosexual development Sexual infantilism: in pursuing and satisfying his or her libido (sexual drive), the child might experience failure (parental and societal disapproval) and thus might associate anxiety with the given erogenous zone. To avoid anxiety, the child...
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...something much darker and more tragic. Martha Graham has completely changed the foundations of dance, the stories that were once fairy tales now exist as narratives of dark twisted Greek mythology. Through her choreography, Graham has constructed a metaphoric and abstract form that sets her work aside from the rest. Her storylines are filled with substance with a deeper meaning buried beneath the surface that is much more dramatic and engaging. Graham has taken on the role of demonstrating that dance doesn’t just tell make believe stories, but actual myths as well. The myth ‘Night Journey’ was one Greek myth that Graham incorporated into a dance piece, which tells the tale of Jocasta and Oedipus, husband and wife, king and queen who discover their original relationship is one of mother and son. After finding out their true relation to one another, they then commit the tragic act of suicide, with Jocasta hanging herself and Oedipus skewing his eyes out with the pins of Jocasta’s dress. After years and years of ballet performances, never have we seen anything so gruesome. Martha...
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...Sophocles uses Greek allusions to display conflict in love between family members. After Antigone is told she is given a death sentence, the Chorus attempts to comfort her, for example, as they relate her situation to “the terrible blinding wound dealt by [Phineus’] savage wife on Phineus’ two sons” (Sophocles 1027). This quote refers to the myth in which Phineus’ wife, Idaea, gives an “impairment” to his children by physically blinding them (“Phineas"). A similar tragedy happens in the backstory of the play Antigone when Oedipus has to marry his mother and have children with her, one of whom is Antigone. She and the other children received an “impairment” in the form of the curse, which is the incestuous relationship between their parents....
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