Aristophanes, Plautus, And Euripides Essays - Women And Death

Aristophanes, Plautus, And Euripides Essays - Women And Death Aristophanes, Plautus, And Euripides In times of struggle and hardship, people are constantly looking for ways to escape their reality. They have found release from their stress in practices such as exercise, therapy, and meditation. In the ancient times of Greece and Rome, life for the citizens was strict and sometimes harsh. During these times of struggle, people searched for ways to vacation from the laws that bore down upon them. One of the ways they accomplished this was through art. Art was a way to express true feeling and emotion and unite a sometimes-divided population. Drama served as one escape for the citizens in Greece and Rome. Attending the plays written by Euripides, Aristophanes and Plautus, gave the people time to get away from their worries and chores and drift into a world of drama. A world where laws can be broken, women can have intelligence and slaves outwit their masters. One of the reasons the plays written by the authors of this time were so popular was because people were able to leave reality behind and slip into a world where none of the truths they held proved to be true. A famous playwright during ancient Greece was Aristophanes. During his lifetime there was extreme political turbulence. Many of his plays reflect the issues of this time and the social concerns. However, instead of presenting these matters seriously and appropriately, he does it in a jovial and satirical manner. His sole purpose in this is to take a bad situation and make it humorous for the audience. It has often been said, especially in recent years, that in Aristophanes political and social thought is purely incidental and always subordinated to the desire to amuse his audience and win the prize(Cambridge, 38). In many of his plays he mimics political situations and figures and the outcome is very humorous. The audience is able to relax and laugh about the problems facing Greece Many elements in his plays are not real and could not have even been conceived of at that time. In Aristophanes play, Lysistrata, the women of Athens and Sparta formulate a ridiculous plot to end the war by abstaining from sexual intercourse with their husbands. Aristophanes takes a difficult and pressing subject, the Peloponnesian War, and develops it into an illusive story of how a woman ends the war. The thought that a woman would have enough intelligence to end the war was a very impractical thought and the idea that Aristophanes would create su ch a plot was quite comedic. It made the audience feel as if they were in an unrealistic world because roles were reversed. Another reason the audience enjoyed the play was for its sheer guts. For Aristophanes to write a whole play about sexual intercourse was gutsy and the audience appreciated the fact that they could attend such a controversial event. During a time when rules and morals were stiff, Aristophanes showed the people of Greece that there is a time when you can relax and thoroughly enjoy yourself. He released some of the pressure of the war by ridiculing it. The audience had a chance to escape the harsh reality of the times and focus on the humor of Aristophanes. Another playwright of ancient literature was Plautus. He came about many years later, but his works did the same for his audiences as Aristophanes did for his. His plays were comical as well, but his work had another aspect the people appreciated. By making his characters unreal and placing them in unlikely situations, made the audience once again feel as if they were in another world. At the time Plautus was writing and performing his plays, Rome was very conservative. There were moral laws and censorship on almost everything. The plays Plautus wrote broke these limitations and gave the people a sense of freedom. One of the limitations Plautus broke was allowing slaves in his plays to outwit their masters. This was unheard of and the mere thought of this happening was surreal. In Plautus play, The Swaggering Soldier, this very event occurs. A conceited soldier, Pyrgopolynices, is deceived by own his slave, Palestrio. Palestrio, knowing his master is a woman-lover, tricks him into thinking he can

history and Origin of Dracula essays

history and Origin of Dracula essays What is a vampire? Webster's Dictionary defines on as "in folklore, a corpse that becomes reanimated and leaves its grave at night to suck the blood of sleeping persons." The Encyclopedia Britannica says that "the persons who turn vampires are generally wizards, suicides, and those who come to a violent end or have been cursed by their parents or by the Church. But anyone can become a vampire if an animal (especially a cat) leaps over the corpse or a bird flies over it." Among the specialists the most intriguing definition is written by Scoffern who said " The best definition I can give of a vampire is a living mischievous and murderous dead body." This is a strange and contradicting , but so are vampires. Religion plays a large part in the human society not only as a source of hope and belief, but as an explanation of events that happen and for what purposes they happen. During the reign of pagan beliefs many areas of the world formed their own superstitions and beliefs in the supernatural. As the people were conquered by other lands or moved, many beliefs became intertwined and developed into most of the superstitions that we know today. In Ancient Greece, tragic stories are full of the most horrifying blood-letting, but the closest one gets to a vampire is the Emusa, or Lamia, a demon that had a tangible body but not one made of human flesh and blood. The Lamia is said to be a real woman. A queen, who was paid visit by Zeus, king of the gods, became pregnant with child. Zeus's wife Hera did not like this and took the child in anger. In her grief the princess left her castle and roamed the woods. Soon she was known for attacking mothers and their children while traveling. Other Ancient Greek demons and vampires include the Maniae (horribly deformed people), the Larvae (spirits that persecute children), the Mormo (a hideous female spirit), the Gilo (night wandering phantoms), and the Stirges (in one form the appeare...

Critically analyse the idea that Pluralism is an outdated view of Essay

Critically analyse the idea that Pluralism is an outdated view of industrial relations - Essay Example It is then significant to highlight a few of the key present issues regarding the conduct of labor in global corporate organizations. It is important to consider how IR as a professional approach addresses these issues and the difference among it and the other two fields of enquiry (Beaumont, PB 2005). Industry’ is on occasion equated with mechanized, as in contrasts among industry and services. ‘Industrial relations’ has in standard never been so controlled. In practice, though, notice until lately frequently focused on firm parts of the market. According to the industrial experts the term ‘industrial relations’ has turn into adequately entrenched that it is retained here to face relations among manager and worker in all spheres of financial movement. The focal point is service: all forms of trade and industry action in which an employee works beneath the influence of an employer (De Silva, S 2001). The further basic crisis, though, is that the require to present industrial relations as an independent playing field has led to an exceptionally reductive view of what constitutes industrial relations. Whilst the in general institutional form of the industrial relations system may possess an â€Å"international reason† which above all transmits compromises among industrial relations actors, an overstated attentiveness on organizations risks neglecting the matter of what industrial relations systems in fact do (Frenkel, S 2003). When analyzing the consequence of organizations systems on the founding of circumstances beneath which paid labour is probable to work, it fast becomes obvious that â€Å"the formation of rules† does not just originate from an independent industrial relations system, still although it is frequently transmitted during this system. What occurs inside industrial relations systems considerably reflects wider societal forces, in relation to industri al systems, the sexual category division of labour