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Sparagmos
''Sparagmos'' ( grc, σπαραγμός, from σπαράσσω ''sparasso'', "tear, rend, pull to pieces") is an act of rending, tearing apart, or mangling, usually in a Dionysian context. In Dionysian rite as represented in myth and literature, a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, is sacrificed by being dismembered. ''Sparagmos'' was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the Dionysian Mysteries. Examples of ''sparagmos'' appear in Euripides's play ''The Bacchae''. In one scene guards sent to control the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their hands. Later, after King Pentheus has banned the worship of Dionysus, the god lures him into a forest, to be torn limb from limb by Maenads, including his own mother Agave. According to some myths, Orpheus, regarded as a prophet of Orphic or Bacchic religion, died when he was disme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omophagia
''Omophagia'', or omophagy (from Greek "raw") is the eating of raw flesh. The term is of importance in the context of the cult worship of Dionysus. Omophagia is a large element of Dionysiac myth; in fact, one of Dionysus' epithets is ''Omophagos'' "Raw-Eater".Henrichs, Albert. "Greek Maenadism from Lympias to Messalina." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 82 (1978): 144. Omophagia may have been a symbol of the triumph of wild nature over civilization, and a symbol of the breaking down of boundaries between nature and civilization.Taylor-Perry, Rosemarie. The God Who Comes: Dionysian Mysteries Reclaimed. Algora Publishing, 2003. It might also have been symbolic that the worshippers were internalizing Dionysus' wilder traits and his association with brute nature, in a sort of "communion" with the god. Mythology sometimes depicts Maenads, Dionysus' female worshippers, eating raw meat as part of their worship; however, there is little solid evidence that historical Maenad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Romans called him Bacchus ( or ; grc, Βάκχος ) for a frenzy he is said to induce called ''bakkheia''. As Dionysus Eleutherios ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. His ''thyrsus'', a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In Orphic religion, he wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The First Death
''The First Death'' is a book by Dimitris Lyacos. It is part of the ''Poena Damni'' trilogy. The book tells the story of a marooned man on a desert island in a sequence of fourteen poem sections, recounting his relentless struggle for survival as well as his physical and mental disintegration. The work alludes simultaneously to a modern Philoctetes, an inverted version of Crusoe as well as the myth of the dismemberment of Dionysus. The dense and nightmarish imagery of the poem, replete with sensations of hallucination, delirium, synesthesia, and putrefaction has drawn comparisons to Lautreamont, Trakl and Beckett. Despite being first in the publication history of the Poena Damni trilogy, ''The First Death'' is chronologically last in the narrative sequence. Title The title of the book refers to the contradistiction between ''first'' and second death in the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine, the ''first death'' referring to the natural end of life (death of the body) as oppos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maenad
In Greek mythology, maenads (; grc, μαινάδες ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Maenads were known as Bassarids, Bacchae , or Bacchantes in Roman mythology after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a bassaris or fox skin. Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by Dionysus into a state of ecstatic frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped with a pine cone. They would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads or wear a bull helmet in honor of their god, and often handle or wear snakes. These women were mythologized as the "mad women" who were nurses of Dionysus in Nysa. Lycurgus "chased the Nurses of the frenzied Dionysus through the holy hills of Nysa, and the sacred implements ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medea (1969 Film)
''Medea'' is a 1969 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the ancient myth of Medea. Filmed in Göreme Open Air Museum's early Christian churches, Pisa, and the Citadel of Aleppo, it stars opera singer Maria Callas in her only film role. She does not sing in the movie. The film is largely a faithful portrayal of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and the events of Euripides' play '' The Medea'' concerning the betrayal of Medea by Jason and his eventual demise at her hands. The film was received positively by critics but did not receive commercial success. According to film commentator Tony Rayns the film represents a committedly adversarial piece of art from the director who loved to challenge society. Rayns calls the film "a love song to Maria Callas" and describes the ending as "backing him (Pasolini) into a cul-de-sac" for the dark ending of the film which almost seems like a resignation from cultural production. Indeed, Pasolini's dramatic and adverse p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentheus
In Greek mythology, Pentheus (; grc, Πενθεύς, Pentheús) was a king of Thebes. His father was Echion, the wisest of the Spartoi. His mother was Agave, the daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and the goddess Harmonia. His sister was Epeiros. Much of what is known about the character comes from the interpretation of the myth in Euripides' tragic play, ''The Bacchae''. Mythological biography The story of Pentheus' resistance to Dionysus and his subsequent punishment is presented by Euripides as follows. Cadmus, the king of Thebes, abdicated due to his old age in favour of his grandson Pentheus. Pentheus soon banned the worship of the god Dionysus, who was the son of his aunt Semele, and forbade the women of Cadmeia to partake in his rites. An angered Dionysus caused Pentheus' mother Agave and his aunts Ino and Autonoë, along with all the other women of Thebes, to rush to Mount Cithaeron in a Bacchic frenzy. Accordingly, Pentheus imprisoned Dionysus, thinking th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donna Tartt
Donna Louise Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American novelist and essayist. Early life Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, the elder of two daughters. She was raised in the nearby town of Grenada. Her father, Don Tartt, was a rockabilly musician, turned freeway "service station owner-cum-local politician", while her mother, Taylor, was a secretary. Her parents were avid readers, and her mother would read while driving. I know a ton of poetry by heart, When I was a little kid, first thing I memorized were really long poems by A. A. Milne ... I also know all these things that I was made to learn. I'm sort of this horrible repository of doggerel verse. In 1968, aged five, Tartt wrote her first poem. In 1976, aged thirteen, Tartt was published for the first time when a sonnet was included in '' The Mississippi Review''. In high school, Tartt was a freshman cheerleader for the basketball team and worked in the public library. In 1981, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oedipus Complex
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to have sex with his mother and disdains his father for having sex and being satisfied before him. Sigmund Freud introduced the idea in ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (1899), and coined the term in his paper ''A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men'' (1910). Freud later developed the ideas of castration anxiety and penis envy to refer to the differences of the sexes in their experience of the complex, especially as their observations appear to become cautionary; an incest taboo results from these cautions. Subsequently, according to sexual difference, a ''positive'' Oedipus complex refers to a child's sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and hatred for the same-sex parent, while a ''negative'' Oedipus complex refers to the desire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castration
Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles), while chemical castration uses pharmaceutical drugs to deactivate the testes. Castration causes sterilization (preventing the castrated person or animal from reproducing); it also greatly reduces the production of hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen. Surgical castration in animals is often called neutering. The term ''castration'' is sometimes also used to refer to the removal of the ovaries in the female, otherwise known as an oophorectomy, or the removal of internal testes, otherwise known as gonadectomy. The equivalent of castration for female animals is spaying. Estrogen levels drop following oophorectomy, and long-term effects of the reduction of sex hormones are significant throughout the body. Castration of animals is intended to favor a desired development of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of ''The Glass Menagerie'' (1944) in New York City. He introduced "plastic theatre" in this play and it closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' (1947), ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' (1955), ''Sweet Bird of Youth'' (1959), and ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's '' Long Day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suddenly, Last Summer
''Suddenly Last Summer'' is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams, written in New York in 1957. It opened off Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams' one-acts, '' Something Unspoken'' (written in London in 1951). The presentation of the two plays was given the overall title ''Garden District,'' but ''Suddenly Last Summer'' is now more often performed alone. Williams said he thought the play "perhaps the most poetic" he had written, and Harold Bloom ranks it among the best examples of the playwright's lyricism. Plot 1936, in the Garden District of New Orleans. Mrs. Violet Venable, an elderly socialite widow from a prominent local family, has invited a doctor to her home. She talks nostalgically about her son Sebastian, a poet, who died under mysterious circumstances in Spain the previous summer. During the course of their conversation, she offers to make a generous donation to support the doctor's psychiatric research if he will perf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia (; born April 2, 1947) is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of '' Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history. Personal life Paglia was born in Endicott, New York, the eldest child of Pasquale and Lydia Anne (née Colapietro) Paglia. All four of her grandparents were born in Italy. Her mother emigrated to the United States at five years old from Ceccano, in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, Italy. Paglia has stated that her father's side of the family was from the Campanian towns of Avellino, Benevento, and Caserta. Paglia was raise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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