Aphrodite:The Goddess at Work in Archaic Greek Poetry

<p>Greek literature frequently associates female beauty with clothing and jewellery. In addition, the concept of female beauty and allure is closely connected with the goddess Aphrodite. The fact that her beauty is repeatedly singled out as an object of comparison for mortal women suggests that beauty, to a certain extent, bridges the gap between mortal and immortal. Pandora and Helen best exemplify this connection because, like Aphrodite, they are known for their beauty and also enjoy semi-divine status. Moreover, these three women are notorious for their ability to deceive and it is mostly then that their beauty is emphasised. This has led to an association between beauty and deception which climaxes in the famous seduction scenes of Greek literature. Not only are these seduction scenes closely related to Aphrodite but they also rely heavily on nonverbal communication, in particular so-called significant objects and objects adaptors such as clothing and jewellery. Consequently, female beauty comes to be misrepresented as artificial and relying on external decorations. However, in contrast to the traditional texts of Homer and Hesiod, Sappho offers a different perspective. Combining Homeric and Hesiodic elements with her own ideas, she alters the way female beauty is viewed. For example, the Homeric war chariot - a symbol of male, military prowess - comes to symbolise the totality of Aphrodite's power uniting in itself male and female qualities. Having addressed the concept of beauty directly, Sappho then concludes that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. With the help of Helen of Troy and her beloved Anaktoria, Sappho sets out to reinvent the concept of female beauty as a godlike, subjective quality that may be expressed in many ways, yet remains inspired by Aphrodite.</p>

Aphrodite:The Goddess at Work in Archaic Greek Poetry

<p>Greek literature frequently associates female beauty with clothing and jewellery. In addition, the concept of female beauty and allure is closely connected with the goddess Aphrodite. The fact that her beauty is repeatedly singled out as an object of comparison for mortal women suggests that beauty, to a certain extent, bridges the gap between mortal and immortal. Pandora and Helen best exemplify this connection because, like Aphrodite, they are known for their beauty and also enjoy semi-divine status. Moreover, these three women are notorious for their ability to deceive and it is mostly then that their beauty is emphasised. This has led to an association between beauty and deception which climaxes in the famous seduction scenes of Greek literature. Not only are these seduction scenes closely related to Aphrodite but they also rely heavily on nonverbal communication, in particular so-called significant objects and objects adaptors such as clothing and jewellery. Consequently, female beauty comes to be misrepresented as artificial and relying on external decorations. However, in contrast to the traditional texts of Homer and Hesiod, Sappho offers a different perspective. Combining Homeric and Hesiodic elements with her own ideas, she alters the way female beauty is viewed. For example, the Homeric war chariot - a symbol of male, military prowess - comes to symbolise the totality of Aphrodite's power uniting in itself male and female qualities. Having addressed the concept of beauty directly, Sappho then concludes that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. With the help of Helen of Troy and her beloved Anaktoria, Sappho sets out to reinvent the concept of female beauty as a godlike, subjective quality that may be expressed in many ways, yet remains inspired by Aphrodite.</p>

In Vitro Propagation of Digitalis trojana Ivanina., an Endemic Medicinal Plant of Turkey

Digitalis trojana Ivanina is a member of the Plantaginaceae family and known by its common name, Helen of Troy foxglove. It is perennial endemic to Çanakkale and Balıkesir, northwestern Turkey. In order to develop an efficient shoot regeneration protocol, the leaf explants of D. trojana were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium containing 6-benzyl adenine (0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 3.0, 5.0 mg/L) and α-naphthalene acetic acid (0.1, 0.5, 1.0 mg/L), 3% (w/v) sucrose and 0.8% (w/v) agar. The highest number of regenerated shoots was obtained from leaf explants that were cultured on MS medium with 3.0 mg/L BA+0.1 mg/L NAA. Regenerated shoots were rooted on MS medium without plant growth regulators. Rooted plants (2–3 cm) were separately transferred to pots containing a mixture of peat and perlite (2:1 v/v) and acclimatized successfully in a growth chamber.

From Mortal to Immortal Love

Mandelstam wrote another set of poems marked by the contrast between love as a form of deep social feeling and love as a renunciation of the earthly. Poems that represent love as a social bond celebrate intimacy as friendship, showing a sense of ethical responsibility and protective consolation in a hostile world. Love as depicted here is, in the famous phrase of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev in On the Meaning of Love, ‘the justification and salvation of individuality through the sacrifice of egoism’. Other poems elevate love to a metaphysical category, reviving the use of archetype that Mandelstam favoured before 1918. But instead of troubled figures like Phaedra and Helen of Troy, the feminine ideal projected here takes the form of otherworldly angels who transcend death. Those visions of the eternal beloved complement the poet’s flight to safety described in the final poems of exile.

rape

Only the rape of citizens was taken seriously by law. Sexual assaults on non-citizens were lesser matters. Rape of enslaved persons, a daily reality, was a crime only if committed by someone other than their owner. Rape of citizen males damaged their reputations; rape of citizen females could render them ineligible for marriage. Ancient myth features almost countless stories of rape, usually of human females by divine males. These tales were common subjects in ancient art and literature. Overwhelmingly, the victims are unmarried girls, who may suffer brutal treatment afterward and frequently bear miraculous offspring, some of whom establish cities (e.g., Romulus and Remus). Rape by human men is rarer in myth; rape of a wife causes massive militarized response (e.g., Helen of Troy, Lucretia). War-rape and post-war rape were standard practice around the Mediterranean.

Nana

‘She was the golden beast, an unconscious force, the very scent of her could bring the world to ruin.’ Nana, daughter of a drunk and a laundress, is the Helen of Troy of Paris. A sexually magnetic high-class prostitute and actress, she becomes a celebrity, rapidly conquering society, ruining all men who fall under her spell-especially Count Muffat, Chamberlain to the Empress. Nana herself meets a terrible fate, consumed by her own dissipation and extravagance, just as the disastrous war with Prussia is declared. Nana is the ninth instalment in the twenty volume Rougon-Macquart series. The novel opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan élite, was la Ville Lumière, the glittering setting-and object-of Zola's scathing denunciation of society's hypocrisy and moral corruption. Nana comes to symbolize the Second Empire regime itself in all its excesses; but in the final chapters, the narrator seems to suggest that the coming disaster is not so much a result of the corruption of the Empire, as of rampant female sexuality.

Intertextuality, Christianity and Death: Major Themes in the Poetry of Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith, one of the most productive of twentieth-century poets, is too often remembered simply as the coiner of the four-word punch line of a single short poem. This paper argues that her claim to be seen as a great writer depends on the major themes which—in addition to “death by water”—she shares with T.S. Eliot: Anglicanism and the modern reworking of classical literature, with a strong, and in her case sometimes autobiographical, emphasis on female protagonists. Where the female figures in Eliot’s The Waste Land are seen as parodic and diminished contemporary versions of their classical originals, Smith enters and reimagines her classical sources, testing the strength of the narrative material which binds Phèdre, Antigone, Persephone and Helen of Troy to their fates. In contrast to Eliot’s adult conversion to Anglo-Catholicism, Smith became a convert to agnosticism, engaging in a passionate poetic argument with the faith of her childhood, which led her to challenge Eliot himself. She brings both of these themes together in the most personal of her poems, which celebrate, and ultimately invoke, Thanatos, “the only god/Who comes as a servant”, and who puts a merciful end to all stories by “scattering... the human pattern altogether”.