The Third Book of Songs begins by referencing a recurring motif of youth and old age through the Greek God Zeus. The Oxford English Dictionary defines \u201cZeus\u201d as the chief god of the ancient Greeks (OED), and is known throughout Greek mythology as the god of men. Michael Field could be potentially using Zeus and Greek mythology as a way to capture the readers rather than using Christianity and the bible.<\/p>\n
In the first Stanza we see words next to each other like \u201cuseful day\u201d and \u201call waxed gray,\u201d which introduces the idea of growing from being na\u00efve to wise.\u00a0 When we grow up, society begins to mold different beliefs about sexuality and social norms. More specifically, when we see children, we often perceive them as innocent and not having such mature thoughts. One example of when we see this motif is when the stanza compares the young and old; the line states, \u201cthe tiny hand in eld\u2019s weak palm.\u201d I see this as the connection between the youthful life and the old life as it elaborates on the imagery of a life cycle. In the next stanza, another line states \u201cwe had never had one heart: by time set a space apart.\u201d In this stanza that it could be showing how in this life we are following and have never found love. This could relate back to the authors speaking to their sexuality and never being able to love who they love because society does not allow it.<\/p>\n
When we examine the author we can see this story carries a deeper meaning. While the story was written under Michael Newfield, the writers were actually two women. When we learn about our authors, we can see how they felt a need to hide their gender and sexual identities through the text and their own lives. More specifically, when we look deeper into the text, we see that the authors used religion as a way to express their prejudices. In this story about Greek mythology we see undertones of homophobia being shined through with religious practices. \u00a0This relates back to their lives and struggles being lesbians in a time where homosexuality was not accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Third Book of Songs begins by referencing a recurring motif of youth and old age through the Greek God Zeus. The Oxford English Dictionary defines \u201cZeus\u201d as the chief god of the ancient Greeks (OED), and is known throughout Greek mythology as the god of men. Michael Field could be potentially using Zeus and … Continue reading Motifs within Greek Mythology<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4651,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145909],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}