Lecture 24 Flashcards
Madea’s soliloquy
- torn between desire and reason
- knows the better course of action is to do the right thing by her family and to give her loyalty to them
- at the end of the soliloquy she sides with reason
- however she ultimately ignores this fact when she sees Jason and desire takes over and she knows it was the wrong choice.
Ovid vs. Euripides
- focuses more on changes
- Ovid glances over basically all of the plot of Euripides and is condensed into one paragraph in this book
- he’s more interested in the smaller parts of the story and wants to make them more interesting because they’re less well-known
Examples of metamorphoses in Medea
- teeth–>warriors
- changes Jason’s dad into a young man again
- tricks Jason’s cousins into thinking she’s going to rejuvenate their father too
- Medea herself as a metamorphoses from her rational self in the beginning to how evil she has become by the end.
- magical power has something to do with this change
- mostly the power of love/lust she has for Jason
Iole and Dryope
- Dryope picked a flower that was actually a nymph
- nymphs punished her by turning her into a flower
- Dyrope believed she had no fault for her actions
- Similar to Diana and Aecteon
- saw Artimis bathing
- turned into a stag
- both had extreme consequences for relatively innocuous actions
- Priapus and Lotis
- House of the Vettii, Pompeii
Byblis and Canus
- twin siblings
- Byblis is deeply in love with her brother Canus who rejects her
- long soliloquy of a female weighing her desires vs. reason.
- tries to work her way through these problems
- the gods marry their siblings, why can’t I?
- she’s says too young to know it’s wrong, and yet she’s making the point to rationalize her feelings so it kind of negates the argument
Taboo
- culturally-defined
- in the case of Byblis and Canus out views align but this wasn’t always the case
Iphis and Ianthe
- Iphis’ father said if this isn’t a boy you need to kill it
- Iphis is a girl and her mom tricks her father
- wanted a boy so he didn’t have to pay a dowry
- both in love with each other but Ianthe doesn’t know she’s a girl.
- Iphis thinks it’s all very unnatural and compares their love to Pasephe and the bull
- even more unnatural because at least the bull was a male
infant exposure
-babies left in trash heaps in the street so maybe someone will come and pick them up and raise them
Roman Sexuality
-Roman sexuality conceived in terms of activity/passivity:
-one person performs an action TO or ON (not with) another person
-It is considered “natural” for a male to be an “active” partner, a female to be a “passive” partner
-“Passive” males and “active” females considered unnatural, often unacceptable
BUT: no concept of homosexual or heterosexual
Orpheus
- gets married and new bride dies when she step son a snake that bites her
- travels to the underworld to receive his wife and is told not to turn back but he does and she is lost forever
Pederasty
- sexual relationships between adults and children
- Orpheus played a part
- various young boy loves of the gods: Cyparissus and Apollo, Ganymede and Jupiter, Hyacinthus and Apollo
- view that upper class individuals should have male and female lovers
Pederasty and Greek education
- viewed as an essential part of education for the upper-class
- lover serves as a valuable mentor for the beloved
- relationship unites wealthy and powerful families
- most relationships ended with marriage of the beloved continued ‘passivity’ of adult males socially unacceptable
Pygmalion
- disgusted by Propoetides so he makes a woman statue from marble
- has completely given up on women
The Propoetides
-women who denied that Venus was a real goddess and turned them into prostitutes
Orpheus and Pygmalion
- both have art that either brings back the woman they lost, or creates their own new woman
- both gave up on women at one point
