Monday March 19

LYSISTRATA CONTINUED:

• all about women (yeah!): they were not promoted to be domestic slaves, but because they were repressed they were powerful in the imagination
• phallocentric: "In traditional Greek mythology, Hermes, god of boundaries and exchange (popularly the messenger god) was considered to be a phallic deity by association with representations of him on herms (pillars) featuring a phallus. There is no scholarly consensus on this depiction and it would be speculation to consider Hermes a type of fertility god. Pan, son of Hermes, was often depicted as having an exaggerated erect phallus. Priapus was a Greek god of fertility whose symbol was an exaggerated phallus. The son of Aphrodite and either Dionysus or Adonis, according to different forms of the original myth, he was the protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens, and male genitalia. His name is the origin of the medical term priapism." (from wiki.com)
• they use their phallocentric community and their femininity to end the war
• "dead day": a day that women have power over men, and can seek their revenge
• tragedy and women: Euripides was possessed by Dionysus
• PG 32: the counselor was:

1. dressed up as a woman, which is the most humiliating thing that can happen to a man in classical literature, in some cultures they ritualistically expel someone (usually a goat, hence the scapegoat) to forgive them all of their sins they are literally 'taking one for the team'
2. dressed up as a corpse, which is the symbolic death of the representative of the men

• Aristophanes is making fun of the phallis, don't fear it, make fun of it!! Making it funny also strips it of it's power

1. symbol of life force
2. attacks it because it also symbolizes:

• aggression
• anger
• warfare
• masculinity

Lorena Bobbitt

To achieve real happiness at the end, all of these must happen:

1) reconciliation

2) happy ending

3) feast= food comedy like 1) Chocolat, 2) Babette's Feast, and 3) Soul Food

4) dancing

5) marriage

6) "the mare and the stallion get together, the Jack will get his Jill, and they will live happily ever after"

7) a great example of this is Kenneth Branagh's 'Much Ado About Nothing'

The Rape of Leda:

Leda and the Swan, by W.B. Yeats

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

How can anybody, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins, engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

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