I have decided to compare the 4 pieces by the poets Ibn Zaydun, Arnaut Daniel, Guido Guinizzelli, Jahan Khatun. Each piece speaks of love as a piece of nature which is a beauty. Love is perceived as being beautiful but not always and the pieces talk about having a dark side to love. The poems also each give power to a different person in a relationship. “From Al-Zahra this poem was very similar to Jahan Khatun’s piece. Love is beautiful, love is nature but love is evil. Love has brought power to ‘her’ over the man. The poem’s subject is her because of how Zaydun describes the person comes across as very feminism. “The Art Of Love” by Arnaut Daniel love again is evil and has given a woman complete control over a man. The speaker loves this woman to a massive degree he is starting to think loving her too much will cause him to lose her. Not loving him is equivalent to her murdering him. “Love Always Repairs To The Noble Heart” by Guido Guinizzelli is different than the previous poems because in this case love still nature but a natural power that makes a man noble giving him power. Love will “…turn his every thought to her command” taken from line 50 page 355. Love gives men full power over woman. Finally “Heart, In His Beauty’s Garden” by Jahan Khatun speaks of love causing hell. The absence of love or the heart breaks causes the speaker to see no flowers. On a rose the speaker only sees the thorns. This now become one of my favorite metaphors. Love is a rose, it has it beauty the flower and its evil the thorns. This is balanced when the flower is living and love is alive. When love dies the flower disappears and only the thorns remain; the rose is no longer beautiful. In this poem love seems to have the capability of taking power away from everyone

Reading Plato’s Symposium was very interesting. To my understanding of the story, there are two types of love, sexual and spiritual, intellectual. Sexual love is between a man and a woman while two men in love will be more focused on learning about each other and the idea of being the others half and completing each other. “it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of the human nature…. Each of us, then is a ‘matching half’ of a human whole because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him”(page 882)

Some interesting points I noticed. How loving for money is dishonorable and not noble but being with someone who was thought to have good virtue and personality and would help one group even when fooled is still seen as being noble.

The story also talks about cheating being dishonorable different from the Odyssey and other stories we have read which have a lot of affairs occurring.

Overall I really enjoyed the different takes on love this story expresses.

I believe the ending is awkward to us because of the modern stories we read. In more modern stories the characters are able to defeat, escape their fate. Virgil was very clear from the beginning of the Fate of the Trojan’s, the city they would conquer, and of Aeneas. Yes I agree the ending was awkward for these reasons but I still enjoyed how Vigil finished his epic poem. I especially enjoyed how Juno did not want to accept Fate the whole story even though Juno would not win. Juno did everything to make Aeneas’ and his men’s journey harder but she finally surrenders to Fate and agrees to leave Aeneas alone with one request, to preserve the name and language. I found this interesting and very satisfying because Juno was a main conflict throughout the story and it almost seemed as if Juno would bother Aeneas and create hardships for him forever. It is as if she has surrendered her own war with herself and Aeneas. I also found the killing of Turnus to be a plot twist of the last book. It seems as if Turnus will be defeated, as fate goes, but he will come out as a survivor and still a hero for his people for his fight. Aeneas almost allows this but I believe this was a fate all along, Aeneas kills Turnus at the last minute.