Academic literature on the topic 'Phaedra (Greek mythology)'

One of my favourite undergraduate classes to teach is Greek mythology. At American universities, Greek myth is a popular choice for satisfying humanities credit requirements, and professors are faced with a double dilemma. On the one hand, students have very different levels of knowledge, ranging from, say, a science major with virtually no idea about the ancient world to a know-it-all myth-whiz Classics major at the other end of the scale. The second problem is the choice and organization of material. Tough decisions have to be made, especially if a professor insists on students reading ancient Greek and Latin texts in translation, instead of relying on a modern retelling of myth. Which tragedies to choose? Which sections of Ovid's Metamorphoses? The whole of Homer or just select books? The challenges are real, but the rewards are great. After the initial struggle with Hesiod's Theogony (despite collective grumbling, Hesiod is non-negotiable for me), witnessing the magic of Greek myth at work never ceases to amaze me. In a blink of an eye, the class is passionately defending or attacking Phaedra, or debating fate and the gods; and, of course, everyone is united in hating Jason. It was my early fascination with Greek myth that attracted me to study Classics (the main culprit was the generously illustrated Serbian translation of Gustav Schwab's Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece) and the crushing sense of responsibility for sparking that first interest in my students is only matched by joy upon seeing it work. I take mythology books very seriously because they are often the gateway to the Classics. Several books on myth landed on my desk this year and I'll start with three general introductions. None of these could serve as introductions to myth for children or young adults, but each could be an excellent first step for those wishing to know more about various scholarly approaches to Greek myths and cults.

This commentary on Nicholas Pappas’s paper, “Telling Good Love from Bad in Plato’s Phaedrus,” reflects on a number of Pappas’s thoughtful observations and interpretations of features woven into the drama of the discussion (for example, Typho and Boreas, wings, left and right). However, unlike Pappas, who refrains from claiming that divinely inspired human love (good love) can be discerned by turning to the earthly, this commentary suggests that Pappas’s contrasts of wings which conceal versus wings which elevate, of left and right, and my added contrast of traditional Greek mythology versus Platonic mythology, lay the groundwork to discern the divine in the earthly, and to distinguish concomitantly bad from good human love. Additionally, the commentary discusses how Plato’s use of collection and division is used to distinguish good and bad human love.

Lack of insight into Greek antiquity, more specifically the nature of classical tragedy and mythology, could be one reason for the negative reception of Benjamin Britten’s last opera Death in Venice. In the first place, this article considers Britten’s opera based on Thomas Mann’s novella as a manifestation of classical tragedy. Secondly, it is shown how mythological characters in Mann’s novella represent abstract ideas2 in Britten’s opera, thereby enhancing the dramatic impact of the opera considerably. On the one hand it is shown how the artist’s inner conflict manifests itself in a dialectic relationship between discipline and inspirat ion in Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue that forms the basis of Aschenbach’s monologue at the end of the opera. The conflict between Aschenbach’s rational consciousness and his irrational subconscious, on the other hand, is depicted by means of mythological figures, Apollo and Dionysus. Two focal points in the opera, namely the Games of Apollo at the end of Act 1 and the nightmare scene which forms the climax of the opera in Act 2, are used to illustrate the musical manifestation of this conflict.

The work entitled Fedra by Miguel de Unamuno—one of the most eminent authors and philosophers of Spanish literature who deals with the human being and delicately describes it—was inspired by the story of Fedra, a princess who falls in love with her son in the Greek mythology. Unamuno recreates this myth within Spanish society of the first half of the 19th century. In the play, Fedra is a young woman who is in love with Hipólito, the son of her husband Pedro, and for this reason she begins to harm herself and the people around her, behaving in a melancholic way as a slave of her passion towards Hipólito. This work will deal with Phaedra's injured state of mind, her melancholic character formed by her past, analyzing to what extent this state of mind leads the young woman in her feeling of love. The work will also focus on the factors that carry the risk of an impossible love within a traditional society and social norms, her own sacrifice and that of the young man.

This study deals with the image of the chariot and its steeds in the imagery of some crucial Greek texts suggesting a number of Iranian resonances, which show the presence of corresponding themes and motifs well rooted within the Mazdean mythology and its poetical language. The article actually proposes a new approach to famous passages, such as Parmenides’ proem to the poem On Nature, Aeschylus’ Persae 171-20, Plato’s Phaedrus 24, and suggests an original interpretation of the ideological (Barbarian = Persian) role assumed by the victorious Greek king in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, when he appears in front of his palace and his wife Clytemnestra. Some aspects of Atossa’s dreams, in particular their symbolic complexity, are dealt with in the framework of a comparative Greek-Persian dimension.

This chapter is centred on the origins of the modern alphabet in ancient Greece. It opens with a philosophical discussion of the account of the invention of writing in Plato’s Phaedrus. Plato attacks writing as the source of a pharmakon—a medicine that is also a poison. This is traced, as it is in Plato, back to hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. The history of their decipherment by Champollion in the Napoleonic period is introduced in order to initiate a discussion of the status of the alphabet as the iconic script of modernity. This story is examined both from the point of view of philology and mythology, as Greek adapted Phoenician forms of writing from northern Africa around the same time as the Homeric poems were being written. Why does the alphabet still signify such a powerful ideology?