Poetic Edda

Snorri’s Edda and Poetic Edda, against the actions of the other members of the Aesir, to understand the path Loki’s character undertook and how he became a demonized figure in the imaginations of the 13th Century audience, similar to that of the devil. Loki has been represented…

Both Odysseus and Telemachus play extremely pivotal and important roles in Homer’s The Odyssey. The phrase “like father like son” can easily describe the similarities between Odysseus and Telemachus’s characters. However, no human beings are exactly alike as both characters also share a great number of differences. So although Odysseus and Telemachus are both similar in the way that they’re great heroic warriors, they differ in craftiness and arrogance which reflect Ancient Greek values.…

and Sauron. NORSE MYTHOLOGY INTRODUCTION The biggest influence upon Tolkien’s works is Norse mythology, particularly the Eddas of the North. The Eddas, separated into the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, are collections of Norse tales written in Iceland during the 13th century, with some stories traced back to the Viking Age. These poems contain the greatest source of Norse mythology, including stories of the Norse deities. Different from the Roman and Greek classical stories of gods and…

Chris Monroe Mr. Everett English 2322 April 29, 2016 The Truth in Othello The tragic play Othello by William Shakespeare is a play that induces many emotions in the audience for various characters on numerous occasions. One of the greatest philosophers in mankind, Aristotle, states in his book Poetics that “poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history…” (Poetics Part IX). Between poetic literature and historical accounts, poetic literature is much easier to…

While a powerful tragic piece departs its reader with a sense of relief, it first derails the reader 's emotions into a frenzy of fear, pity, and sorrow. In Sophocles’ tragic play, Oedipus the King, Oedipus must save Thebes from the dreadful fortune cursed upon them. What Oedipus fails to realize is that he caused the plague through his fulfilled prophecy: to exchange rings with his mother and to terminate his father’s life. Over the course of the play, Oedipus slowly unravels his origins. His…

Grace Wang December 18, 2015 Tragedy Essay Which is the better tragedy, according to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy: Medea or Oedipus Rex? According to Aristotle’s definition, a tragic hero is a distinguished person occupying a high position, living in a prosperous life and falling into misfortune due to his own tragic flaw which consequently leads to his reversal and late recognition. Medea and Oedipus Rex are both one of the best classical and well known examples of tragedy. Oedipus Rex…

Of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, many of them fall into the genre of tragedy, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. This latter in particular could be classified as a revenge tragedy due to its subject matter. Some elements of tragedy include complex, character-driven plots, noble, yet flawed, main characters, and highly embellished language. Hamlet contains these elements, respectively, in Hamlet’s convoluted attempts to avenge his father, his paradoxical good and bad traits, and…

Troy Maxson: Good, Bad or Tragic Hero? In August Wilson’s play Fences the protagonist, Troy Maxson, is widely considered to be one of the greatest characters of the American stage (Shmoop Editorial Team). He is a very complex man and leaves one wondering is he good, bad or simply a tragic hero? This is not an easy question to answer on the surface, but, reading and analyzing the play points toward the latter. Troy is quite simply bad at being good. “Troy has a clear-cut case of hamartia. This…

“Do any humans beings ever realize life while they live it? —every, every minute”: Tragedy in Our Town Despite the uplifting tone of Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, he suggests that individuals never truly appreciate life. In Our Town, it manifests a tragic vision of life and can be classified as one of the major genres of modern drama, a tragedy. In the tragedy, it implies that there is a symbol of death that is foreshadowed from the beginning. This captures how Our Town is a classical…

It can be argued that dominant ‘fatal flaw reading’ of the play The Tragedy of Hamlet; Prince of Denmark that Hamlet was simply a man of inaction, which is incorrect in that Hamlet did not act because of his religious stance on the topic of murder at the time the play was written, and this had a great deal of consequences. The Tragedy of Hamlet; Prince of Denmark, is a tragedy play written by William Shakespeare, published in 1603. The religious teachings of the time were against murder, which…