Ithaca
Ithaca or Ithaka
is a Greek
island located in the Ionian Sea,
off the northeast coast of Kefalonia and
to the west of continental Greece.
Ithaca's main
island has an area of 96 square kilometres (37 sq mi) and had a
population in 2011 of 3,231. It is the second-smallest of seven main Ionian
Islands, after Paxi. Ithaca is a separate regional unit of the Ionian
Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit.
The capital is Vathy or Ithaki.
Modern Ithaca is
generally identified with Homer's Ithaca, the home of Odysseus, whose
delayed return to the island is the Odyssey's plot.
Complexion
Complexion refers
to the natural color, texture,
and appearance of the skin, especially that of the face.
Metaphor v.s. simile
Similes and metaphors are both used to make comparisons or elucidate concepts.
Metaphors simply state a comparison.
Similes use the words “like” or “as” to compare thing.
Homeric Epithet (Epithets in Homer)
A characteristic
of Homer's style is the use of epithets, as in "rosy-fingered" dawn or "swift-footed" Achilles. Epithets are used
because of the constraints of the dactylic
hexameter (i.e., it is convenient to have a stockpile of metrically
fitting phrases to add to a name) and because of the
oral transmission of the poems; they are mnemonic aids to the
singer and the audience alike.
Epithets in epic
poetry from various Indo-European traditions may be traced to a
common tradition. For example, the phrase for "everlasting
glory" or "undying fame"
can be found in the Homeric Greek as kléos
áphthiton and the Sanskrit as śrávo ákşitam.
These two phrases were, in terms of historical linguistics, equivalent in phonology, accentuation, and quantity (syllable length). In other words, they
descend from a fragment of poetic diction which was handed down in
parallel over many centuries, in continually diverging forms, by generations of
singers whose ultimate ancestors shared an archetypal repertoire of poetic
formulae and narrative themes.
Epithets alter the
meaning of each noun to which they are attached. They specify the existential
nature of a noun; that is to say, Achilles is not called
"swift-footed" only when he runs; it is a marker of a quality that
does not change. Special epithets, such as patronymics, are used
exclusively for particular subjects and distinguish them from others, while
generic epithets are used of many subjects and speak less to their individual
characters. In these examples, the epithet can be contradictory to the past
state of the subject: in Odyssey VI.74, for instance, Nausicaa takes
her "radiant clothing", to be washed; since it is dirty, it is
unlikely to be radiant.
Invocation
An invocation (from the Latin
verb invocare "to call on, invoke, to give")
may take the form of:
•Supplication or prayer
As a supplication or prayer it implies to call upon God, a god, goddess, or person,
etc. When a person calls upon God, a god, or goddess to ask for something (protection, a favour, his/her spiritual presence
in a ceremony, etc.) or simply for worship,
this can be done in a pre-established form or with the
invoker's own words or actions. An example of a pre-established text for
an invocation is the Lord's Prayer.
All religions in general use invoking
prayers, liturgies, or hymns; see for example the mantras in Hinduism and Buddhism,
the Egyptian Coming Out by Day (aka Book of the Dead), the Orphic Hymns
and the many texts, still preserved, written in cuneiform characters
on clay tablets, addressed to Shamash, Ishtar, and other deities.
•A form of possession
The word "possession"
is used here in its neutral form to mean "a state (potentially psychological) in which an individual's normal personality is replaced by
another". This is also sometimes known as 'aspecting'.
This can be done as a means of communicating with or getting closer to a deity
or spirit, and as such need not be viewed synonymously with demonic
possession.
•Command or conjuration
Main article: Conjuration
Some have performed invocation for the
purpose of controlling or extracting favors from certain spirits or deities.
These invocations usually involve a commandment or threat against the entity
invoked.
•Self-identification with certain spirits
Invocation can refer to taking on the qualities of the being invoked, such as
the allure of Aphrodite or the ferocity of Kali. In this instance the being
is literally called up from within oneself (as an archetype) or into
oneself (as an external force), depending on the personal belief system of the
invoker. The main difference between this type of invocation and the possessive
category described above is that the former may appear more controlled, with self-identification and deity-identification
mixed together. In practice, invocations may blend many or all of these
categories.
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's
Prayer (also called the Our
Father or Pater Noster among other names) is a venerated Christian
prayer that, according to the New Testament, was taught by Jesus to
his disciples. Two versions of it are recorded: a
longer form in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the Sermon on
the Mount, and a shorter form in the Gospel
of Luke as a response by Jesus to a request by "one of his disciples" to teach them "to pray as John taught
his disciples." The context of the prayer in Matthew is a discourse deploring
people who pray ostentatiously.
Sonnet 18
“Shall
I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. ”
Sonnet 18, often alternatively titled Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?,
is one of the best-known of 154 sonnets written by the English
playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Part of the Fair Youth sequence (which comprises sonnets1–126 in the
accepted numbering stemming from the first edition in 1609), it is the first of the cycle after the opening sequence now
described as the procreation sonnets.
In the sonnet, the speaker compares his beloved to the summer
season, and argues that his beloved is
better. He also states that his beloved will live on forever through the
words of the poem. Scholars have found parallels within the poem to Ovid's Tristia and Amores,
both of which have love themes. Sonnet 18 is written in
the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in a rhymed couplet.
Detailed exegeses have revealed several double meanings within
the poem, giving it a greater depth of interpretation.
