In both works that i read on courtly love. Both Petrarch and Louis Labe, share similarities in there work. They both are extremely infatuated with the person they are writing about. Louis labe takes the time to describe every flesh of beauty on the man of her dreams, to explain why exactly she is in so much pain. Moreover Petrarch, takes the same approach in describing the correlation between romanticism and love. Both poets make it seem as if there ex partners were the reason they lived, and the reason they will die.

Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata.

In Plato’s Symposium, Pausanias describes love in the form of two types. The first type of love he talks about is common love. Common love is described as the vulgar and sexual desires between a man and woman. On the other hand, the other type of love is referred to Heavenly love. This type of love goes beyond sexual desires, and is more compatible with a spiritual bond. Although I can strongly agree with Pausanias view on heavenly love, I cannot agree with his view on common love. For the reason being that his philosophy on common love, is closely connected with lust and infatuation. I don’t believe that lust is a form of love, but its own separate idea. Moreover, none of the speakers really distinguish the two ideas, but includes them in one.

What is the role of prophecies and/or fate in The Aeneid?

In The Aeneid, prophecies and/or fate played both a beneficial and detrimental role in  this epic poem. In book 1, it is already told that Aeneas will rise as the man “whom the Romans will arise to”. However, we are surprised as readers to see how much of a struggle it was for that to happen.  It is detrimental how the rest of the 12 books, shows how much Aeneas has to suffer and sacrifice both emotionally and physically to fulfill his prophecy. On the other hand,  prophecies also played a beneficial role to Aeneas character. We got to see how the character matured each book after overcoming every obstacle that was thrown at him.  This showed how strong and heroic he is by not only respecting his fate, but also accepting it and never giving up.