What I learnt today...
Today I learnt that, as women, if we are set upon by a man trying to rape us we should not run away as this will only lead to us falling into sin.
I'm currently studying medieval english and am looking at medieval treatments of the Orpheus legend (basically Orpheus' wife Eurydice runs away from the god Aristaeus who is trying to rape her and in the process steps on a venomous snake and dies. She goes to the underworld and Orpheus follows. He plays his harp and Hades agress to let her go on the condition that hr does not look bad when he is leading her out. As you probably guessed he does look back and Eurydice is taken into the underworld forever. The legend then ends with Orpheus being ripped to shreds by jealous women because he refuses to take another wife.). Today was the poem 'Orpheus and Eurydice' by Robert Henryson. Henryson was very educated and wanted everyone to know so he wrote it as a moral tale (like Aesop but Henryson does long rambling ones where he analyses the story in extreme detail). His moral, amongst other things, explained what each charcater symbolised - Orpheus was the string masculine - intellectual and stable, Eurydice the emotional and unstable femininity, Aristaeus (in this version a shepard not a god as medieval god did not walk the earth!) represents 'good virtue'. He is the force trying to control and bring in to line the unstable feminine and the snake symbolises deadly sin. By resisting control Eurydice finds herself falling into the deadly sin that femininity will lead you to if left unchecked.
So now we all know rapists are good and we should never run away...... At this point I could rant but I am placing myself in the past and see that this view was probably acceptable back then (also Henryson may have also said all the stuff that seems to contradict the story (which makes out that Eurydice is good and Aristaeus bad not vice versa like in Henryson's analysis) to make us think about differing interpretations and to generally be a bit quirky because he was clever and everyone should know this.
In other news the snow has mostly gone :( but we did see two mounds of snow where our snowmen had been!!
I'm currently studying medieval english and am looking at medieval treatments of the Orpheus legend (basically Orpheus' wife Eurydice runs away from the god Aristaeus who is trying to rape her and in the process steps on a venomous snake and dies. She goes to the underworld and Orpheus follows. He plays his harp and Hades agress to let her go on the condition that hr does not look bad when he is leading her out. As you probably guessed he does look back and Eurydice is taken into the underworld forever. The legend then ends with Orpheus being ripped to shreds by jealous women because he refuses to take another wife.). Today was the poem 'Orpheus and Eurydice' by Robert Henryson. Henryson was very educated and wanted everyone to know so he wrote it as a moral tale (like Aesop but Henryson does long rambling ones where he analyses the story in extreme detail). His moral, amongst other things, explained what each charcater symbolised - Orpheus was the string masculine - intellectual and stable, Eurydice the emotional and unstable femininity, Aristaeus (in this version a shepard not a god as medieval god did not walk the earth!) represents 'good virtue'. He is the force trying to control and bring in to line the unstable feminine and the snake symbolises deadly sin. By resisting control Eurydice finds herself falling into the deadly sin that femininity will lead you to if left unchecked.
So now we all know rapists are good and we should never run away...... At this point I could rant but I am placing myself in the past and see that this view was probably acceptable back then (also Henryson may have also said all the stuff that seems to contradict the story (which makes out that Eurydice is good and Aristaeus bad not vice versa like in Henryson's analysis) to make us think about differing interpretations and to generally be a bit quirky because he was clever and everyone should know this.
In other news the snow has mostly gone :( but we did see two mounds of snow where our snowmen had been!!