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Sparagmos
''Sparagmos'' (, 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 dismembered by raging Thra ... [...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 Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Ancient Rome, Romans) for a frenzy he is said to induce called ''baccheia''. His wine, music, and ecstatic dance were considered to 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 of Dionysus, 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 Thrace, Thracian, others as Greek. In O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The First Death
''The First Death'' is a book by Dimitris Lyacos. It is the third part of the ''Poena Damni'' trilogy. The book is a fictional rendering of a poem that is translated by an inmate with the use of a dictionary he finds available in the library of the prison he is detained. The translated poem tells the story of a marooned man on a desert island in a sequence of fourteen 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 Samuel Beckett, 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 b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maenad
In Greek mythology, maenads (; ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of his retinue, the '' thiasus''. Their name, which comes from μαίνομαι (''maínomai'', “to rave, to be mad; to rage, to be angry”), 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 Nurs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medea (1969 Film)
''Medea'' is a 1969 Italian film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the ancient myth of Medea. The film stars opera singer Maria Callas in her only film role and is largely a faithful portrayal of the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and the events of Euripides' play ''Medea''. 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 personality is very much alive in this film which depicts Medea's murder of her children born of Jason and his betrothed. Plot In the city of Iolcus in Greece, King Aeson is removed from power by his h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentheus
In Greek mythology, Pentheus (; ) was a king of Ancient Thebes (Boeotia), Thebes. His father was Echion, the wisest of the Spartoi. His mother was Agave (Theban princess), Agave, the daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and grandson of the goddess Harmonia (mythology), Harmonia. His sister was Epirus (mythology), Epeiros and his son was Menoeceus. 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 Theban kings in Greek mythology, 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 (Theban princess), Agave and his aunts Ino (G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donna Tartt
Donna Louise Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American novelist. She wrote the novels '' The Secret History'' (1992), '' The Little Friend'' (2002), and ''The Goldfinch'' (2013), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into a 2019 film of the same name. She was included in ''Time'' magazine's 2014 " 100 Most Influential People" list. Patchett, Ann (April 23, 2014)"Donna Tartt". ''Time''. Early life and education Donna Louise 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. As a child, Tartt memorized "really long poems by A. A. Milne", and described herself as a "horrible repository of doggerel verse." Tartt wrote her first poem in 1968, whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oedipus Complex
In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex is a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. A daughter's attitude of desire for her father and hostility toward her mother is referred to as the feminine (or female) Oedipus complex. The general concept was considered by Sigmund Freud in '' The Interpretation of Dreams'' (1899), although the term itself was introduced in his paper "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men" (1910). Freud's ideas of castration anxiety and penis envy refer to the differences of the sexes in their experience of the Oedipus complex. The complex is thought to persist into adulthood as an unconscious psychic structure which can assist in social adaptation but also be the cause of neurosis. According to sexual difference, a ''positive'' Oedipus complex refers to the child's sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and aversion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castration
Castration is any action, surgery, surgical, chemical substance, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male 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. Some forms of castration cause sterilization (medicine), sterilization (permanently preventing the castrated person or animal from reproduction, reproducing); it also greatly reduces the production of hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen. Surgical castration in animals is often called neutering. #Other animals, Castration of animals is intended to favor a desired development of the animal or of its habits, as an anaphrodisiac or to prevent overpopulation. The parallel of castration for female animals is spaying. Castration may also refer medically to oophorectomy in female humans and animals. The term ''castration'' may also be sometimes used to refer to emasculation where ... [...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. 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's Journey into Night'' and Arthur Miller's ''Death of a Salesman''. Much of Williams's most acclaimed wor ... [...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 In 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 pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia ( ; born April 2, 1947) is an American academic, social critic and Feminism, feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of ''Sexual Personae, 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 Culture of the United States, American culture such as its Visual art of the United States, visual art, Music of the United States, music, and Film in the United States, film history. Early and personal life Paglia was born in Endicott, New York, the eldest child of Lydia Anne () and Pasquale Paglia. All four of her grandparents were born in Italy. Her mother emigrated to the United States at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
